Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1635 Already

"It's just a guess on my part, but I don't believe that the Runeweaver Eyes, even upgraded beyond the E-Grade, would be capable of doing what we've seen without Primus Luminaria also allowing him to manipulate Runes above his Tier.

"If I'm correct, the Analei took off her armor because she knew she would be in more danger with it on than with it off the moment she sensed the change in things. As for the specific details of it all, I'm afraid that without being there myself, I can't tell you. Only he would know."

A silence fell once more, the words Denesture had spoken earlier ringing in their ears again.

He's already won.

Sylas squatted down and picked up a crystal from the heart of a demon, rolling it around in his fingers.

The real reason he had gone out of his way to fight with the 040 Sanctum was because he couldn't be sure of how things would translate on the E-tier battlefield. He needed a buffer between himself and the Demons so that he could observe them and make certain that his previous deductions were correct.

After he was finished, there was no need to worry about these things any longer, as they would certainly work out in his favor.

Following that, he simply didn't need them anymore. If he wanted to, he could just stay in his own territory the entire time and win just based on time survived. With things as they were now, it was likely that even the 001 Sanctum couldn't outlast him.

This was why he also didn't care if he exposed the Hollow Wing or not. It didn't make much of a difference.

Denesture was right in part, though. This was all related to the armor Sylas had seen.

How was it that they were breaking the rules? Sylas didn't believe that something like that would be so blatant. Although he wasn't a fool who believed that the world was always fair and just, he did know enough to know that only an idiotic power would ever hold such an event only to allow the projection of cheating to be displayed to absolutely everyone.

Although Elbrum's actions had been plainly unfair, they still provided a chance and opportunity. Plus, if Sylas was correct, he highly doubted that he would ever allow things to continue so flippantly for the higher-level struggles. He would probably be more buttoned up by the time you got to the D-tiers and higher.

So that left the question of... how?

When Sylas saw the Demons, he understood.

They weren't bringing in the armors from the outside. They were creating them in here. That was how they circumvented the rules and gave themselves an advantage.

The question was... how? How were they creating such powerful armors in such short periods of time?

Sylas knew how rare Rune Masters who could construct Legendary Items were. They practically didn't exist. The Legendary Path Treasures in circulation now were practically all handed out by the system as rewards or hoarded by Clans and organizations to hand to their offspring when the time was right.

These treasures were almost always returned to the family after they had lived out their use to their users.

So what was going on?

Templates.

They brought in templates with them, then triggered the creation of these armors by using the crystals of these Demons in place of Aetherstones.

This place was nothing more than a simulation. The Demonic Aether in the air was fake. It was instead Real Aether that was painted with hues of demonic aura.

Ultimately, the Aether these Demons were using was also Real Aether. Everything was simulated to make it seem like they were in a Demon World, but if this was a real Demon World, not only would the Sanctum not have any real control, the system would come down with a punishment harsh enough to wipe them all out for the crime of creating Demons.

Why was the distinction important? Well, aside from the fact it allowed Sylas to openly manipulate these Runes without outing himself as someone with Demonic Will, it was also crucial because Sylas had another understanding of Demons that many hadn't personally experienced before.

Demonic Treasures.

Demons were peculiar in that upon some of their deaths, their bodies could spontaneously produce treasures. Sylas had once had one-a Demonic Claw Treasure that could even circumvent the restrictions of his Scorned Wraps.

But once again, these weren't real Demons... they were simulations.

The way the simulation was supposed to work was that a random kill had a random-but incredibly small-chance of triggering the birth of a Demonic Treasure. This treasure could then be used by participants in the battle as replacements for weapons and armors they weren't allowed to have here.

What did this mean?

It meant that not only were the crystals that formed the core of these Demons basically just glorified Aetherstones, they were also Aetherstones ingrained with a small, but very real, possibility of triggering a hidden template within them to produce a weapon.

Obviously, these chances were very low; otherwise, there would be weapons littering the battlefield by now. But it was also a very hidden mechanism as well.

It had to be remembered that a Demonic Treasure was one that ingrained itself into the body. It was a process that didn't happen randomly but had to be accepted first.

Essentially, the top-tier Sanctums, likely used to the methods the Emperor Sanctum usually used, had prepared for this possibility ahead of time and were instead using their own personal templates as the vessels for triggering the creation of these treasures rather than their own bodies, thus bringing everything full circle.

However, as interesting as all of this was, it still didn't quite describe why it was such a useful mechanism for Sylas.

The secret to that lay in how real Demonic Treasures worked. What mechanism possibly allowed a living creature to produce an inanimate object?

The answer to that was in Comprehensions and the way Demon bodies interacted with the Real Plane in death.

The Demon Claw Sylas received didn't just pop out of thin air just because of a game-like mechanism. It appeared because the Demon in question had a particularly strong Claw Comprehension which the Real Plane couldn't process properly upon its death, thus resulting in the system creating a Treasure out of it in an attempt to recycle it.

But what happened when the Demons in question were just simulations and could be easily processed by the system around them?

It meant that upon their deaths, there was no confusion at all... so where were the weapons coming from this time?

The weapons were being artificially created by snatching from the existing energy of the Demons. The exchange of Comprehension and Gene to the system-and thus the creation of a weapon-was all artificial, meaning... All of the attack patterns of the Demons were entirely built on a Comprehension built from a string of programmable Runes.

And not only was Sylas able to read these Runes to predict these attack patterns, but he was also capable of creating openings that forced this exchange between life and weapon ahead of time, thus allowing him to kill these Demons by taking advantage of their link to the system and simulation.

He had already won.