Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1559 Unfathomable Limits [500 GT Bonus]

The moment Sylas sat, he felt a chill creep into his bones, a sharp pain that wanted him to yield.

He shattered it with a thought.

Ironically enough, to him, this was far easier than the Trial had been.

The more familiar Sylas became with the world, the deeper his understanding of the system's inner workings became.

When he thought about it... why was it that a city would need its City Lord to be tied to it? At the core of it, Sylas believed that it wasn't so different from the existence of a Mount.

A Mount was a beast that didn't have strength unless it was being ridden. Even the Hollow Wing was little more than a prop waiting to be killed unless someone was on its back.

In the Golden Grove's Secret Realm, Sylas had to hand the Hollow Wing over to Alex and Jala just to make it work. It couldn't function independently as a beast and have the natural advantages that Mounts usually did at the same time.

Cities were much the same.

If Sylas was correct, City Steles were the simplification of a concept from ancient times.

He had heard of things like Karma already, an ethereal concept that tied him to those that had helped him a great deal, like Nyssa had. Because of its existence, he was limited in what he could do to her until he substantially separated himself from the chain of Karma that started with her.

Unfortunately, such a thing was easier said than done. Ironically enough, giving Nyssa something as valuable was easier than finding a method to separate himself.

But the more powerful Sylas became, the more difficult it likewise became to repay Nyssa and sever this relationship.

Sylas believed that cities likewise worked on such an ancient concept. It wasn't exactly Karma, but it was something more complex, something that tied nations together and gave their people strength under a single barrier.

When one traveled through the universe, when you entered the territories of others, you would often find yourself suppressed. This was an action of the system. But, if you entered the range of someone's city, wasn't that much the same? Was the system just, once again, trying to replicate something from the past that had long existed?

In that case, if Sylas wanted to break free from the limitations of a City Lord and benefit from having a City anyway, he needed to find another way to anchor himself to this City Stele.

And lucky enough for him, he was maybe the one person who understood this Glass Throne to the truest depths of its core.

"Yield."

Sylas' voice was soft, but it trembled the very foundations of the city itself. It bent, broke, and then shattered completely beneath his Will.

And then the city came to rest.

Moments of silence hung in the air until it was as though a heart had restarted. The City sprung to life. Aether Pathways beneath the foundations roared, Steles across the city-from the Professions to the Classes-awakened, and in that moment, Sylas felt every corner of the city itself reflect in his mind.

When he stood from the Throne, the City shook. And then something that even Sylas himself hadn't expected happened.

[Welcome, Lord of the City of Glass]

[Please Select]

A list of names thrummed to life before Sylas, growing longer and longer until even his head was spinning. The list must have been hundreds of trillions long. Sylas had tried to subconsciously keep up with every name that appeared, only to find himself falling further and further behind until he had no choice but to stop.

'These are... spawns?'

Sylas frowned.

Spawns were supposed to be random. They didn't come in a list like this, and depending on the Grade of a City, you should essentially be rolling a gacha to see what level of talent you would receive.

'Wait. These aren't spawns. These are real people.'

The realization suddenly dawned on Sylas.

This list wasn't a list of unknown spawns he could select from-this was a list of real people of Earth, of their Star System and surrounding Star Systems... It was a list of every person in the entire Milky Way.

It wasn't just this, but there was a grade right by their name as well. This grade went from F- all the way up to SSS+-theoretically, of course. Sylas had yet to organize the names, but he hadn't seen a single S, or A, or even B for that matter, let alone an SSS+.

In fact, there were many names without a grade at all. The list was hundreds of trillions long, but only a few tens of millions had a grade by their name in the first place.

But what was interesting about this list was that the grade didn't seem tied to their current individual strength. Instead, it was a measure of how well they would fit into roles within the city.

For example, right now, the list was toggled to militiamen. This was a measure of how well they would fit into the military style of the city, the formations, how well they could use their armors and weapons, etc. There were even extra toggles to see if they would be able to fit in as a general, or take on commanding roles, or even if they could be part of the cavalry and lead the Glass Beasts properly.

Depending on the toggle Sylas chose, he could see how well anyone in the vicinity could fit in.

'The ones with grades... these should be everyone on Earth currently. The ones without grades should be outside the scope of Earth and beyond the City's ability to access. But... it's possible that after Earth finishes its evolution, this will become possible again.'

Sylas' gaze flickered.

It seemed that he didn't need spawns. He could use the City itself to sense the potential of the people of Earth and recruit them himself.

Unlike spawns, this had no limit. And once these people were tied to his affiliations, he would be able to assign a Loyalty rating to them and essentially know of traitors before they came.

In the hands of the right person, this ability had unfathomable limits.