Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1513 Two Problems

It sounded as though the string of a guitar the size of a star broke in the depths of space.

Sylas lay there, his body calculating one strand of change after another.

The Ape Emperor Armor and Madness seemed to be intertwined in so many ways. It almost felt as though the Ape Emperor Armor was created by someone who failed to form the Madness Lineage.

Sylas didn't believe this was actually true. There were enough differences that they seemed distinct enough. But these similarities were useful to him nonetheless.

When the Ape Emperor—or any Warlord Armor, for that matter—formed, there was communication with the system. They meshed together, creating space and priming a region in one's Genes.

A while ago, before Sylas became a Primus Imperium, he had had a plan. That plan was to learn enough of the Warlord Armors that he could forcefully use these incremental changes and the priming the system was doing to his body to increase his space for Genes.

However, because he became a Primus Imperium, his body could now accommodate even E-Grade Genes. As such, he had no limits in absorbing F-Grade Genes. So, Sylas threw this idea to the back of his mind. It was an unnecessary effort.

Now, that idea came back in full force. But this time, it was far wilder.

What he wanted to do was hijack the Ape Emperor Armor. Then, he would use his True Pride Seed as a bridge, connecting the two.

His True Pride Seed had seeped into the deepest corners of his body after reaching Seed Manifestation. It was well intertwined with every aspect of his body... Including his Race Quintessence.

In this way, if he could make the Ape Emperor Armor perfect enough, he could use his True Pride Seed like a lever against his Race Quintessence, turning the priming the system would have done for his Genes into priming it was doing for his Race Quintessence.

So long as he could pry it open just enough, he could form a crack in the barrier blocking him from reaching the level of an A-Grade Race.

There was only one thing standing in his way:

[Madness Control] and the level of his Ape Emperor Armor.

He wasn't worried about [Madness Control]. His Madness had progressed to the level of a Gold Comprehension. With it, he was confident in [Madness Control] being strong enough, as the latter was derived from the former.

The more troublesome part was the Ape Emperor Armor.

The more perfect the Armor, the stronger the Gene formed. But it was ultimately just a Gene. Even if he used his Pride Seed as a bridge, whatever effects managed to make it to his Race Quintessence would be too minimal.

What effort the system would need to make space in a Gene pool would be too small compared to the effort it would need to make the same amount of space in a Race Quintessence. So, trying to use the force generated for the former on the latter would be like trying to use an egg to smash apart a rock.

And then there was the obvious elephant in the room.

You could only use an Emperor Armor or Warlord Armor a single time. Sylas had already used his once before.

The obvious answer seemed to be to use one of the others. However, that wouldn't work.

He needed the aura of the Ape Emperor because it matched with his Great Ape Lineage. Otherwise, his Human Simioid Race wouldn't understand what direction it was evolving in, and the results would be too unpredictable.

So, Sylas needed a change. He needed the Ape Emperor Armor he created this time to be so fundamentally unique, so fundamentally different, that it was registered by the system as a completely new Armor.

At the same time, it needed to generate such a great change in his body that the system would realize it needed to make far more space than usual. It needed to not just generate a Unique Gene—it needed to, at the very least, generate a Gene Talent.

The first step was a new Will. He couldn't use the Will that centered the Ape Emperor Armor; he needed a new one—one real enough to be mistaken as a completely new beast of completely new origins.

Every idea he formed came with a new solution, his mind working so fast it was like he was carving out his own space in the universe in real time.

The new Will of this Emperor Armor would be a combination: his Will, tainted by that of the True Pride Seed, and the Grimblade's Bloodline.

He could still see that rusted, hiltless sword in his peripheral, and he could embody its very Will all too easily.

Dauntless. An unsatisfied thirst for battle. The Will to cut down anything, even at the cost of one's own blood. To devour, endlessly, unsatiable.

The Gluttony Seed pulsed with its own radiance.

Sylas didn't have time to fight back against it, allowing it to bloom, already focusing on the Rune construction.

The Rune Armor was designed to trigger the formation of a Gene. This Gene was more complex than a usual Core Stat Gene, but the Rune Armor itself was less complex. However, this wasn't good enough.

Sylas formed the skeleton of the Ape Emperor Armor in the blink of an eye—so easily even the Ape Emperors of the main Sanctum would have been shocked into silence.

But that shock would have been nothing compared to what they experienced the moment Sylas started making changes.

He stripped it down, shattering one piece after another, reforming it, only to shatter it again. His mind was working so fast that blood leaked from his nose, his body shaking as he pushed himself further and further.

He broke down the Legendary Genes he understood in his mind, splitting them apart and then forming them together, taking bits and pieces he felt could work and then forming them into the Ape Emperor Armor.