Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1680 Ceiling [Bonus]

[Bonus thanks to Ricky_D_Reader :)]

Sylas looked as though he had become some sort of porcelain doll, his body on the verge of a very real collapse before the eyes of everyone around him. Or rather, it should have been.

But at the moment, it was like he had been cut and copied out of reality. Everyone seemed to naturally avoid him, walking around him, sliding out of his way with a sidestep or two, but not a single one seemed to truly see him anymore.

The gazes he had been feeling earlier were nowhere to be seen, and in that moment... it was like he had been entirely erased as he accelerated toward his own demise.

There was no escaping it. Something had grabbed onto him and refused to let go.

And Sylas didn't fight it.

He didn't know how to.

It was that very same helpless feeling he had experienced back then. He knew too little to pull himself out of this situation, and he had no idea what he could have possibly touched upon just now.

If he had to guess about what was holding these A-tiers down, the obvious choice would have been the Thryskai Gods. And yet, right now, Sylas was so very certain that that wasn't what this was.

There was something else going on here, something he couldn't understand or begin to fathom, something so unprecedented that it made even A-tiers act like children rather than facing the reality of the world they were in.

Sylas stared into its maw indifferently.

His heart rate was the same, the cadence of his breath even, his thoughts not running askew but instead feeling clearer now than maybe they ever had been.

He recalled every moment of his life, from the moment he formed his first memory to the events that led him to standing right here.

Had he done enough? He never truly felt like he could achieve such a thing.

Sylas wouldn't classify himself as an ambitious person, not in the normal sense. He didn't care to do what he considered to be a bare minimum if there was a point in going further.

When he thought he understood the full scope of the world, he was fine with leaving things as they were.

He knew there was a government, he knew that there were probably billionaires in the gloomy pulling strings and changing life as he knew it to suit their own tastes, but he at no time really felt controlled by those people, so he let them continue in their little playpens.

So long as he didn't feel bothered by them, he wouldn't bother with them.

Things changed when that message appeared before him, when he realized that the world was much larger than he knew it to be, that there was definitely something out there that could impose a Will onto his life that he didn't care for.

When he realized this, he adapted immediately, realizing that he had to be better, stronger. To be All-Powerful, to be All-Knowing.

To him, it was never really about being ambitious. He only ever measured his own success by his own metrics, not bothering to use the measuring sticks of others.

It was when he felt that his own ability to measure himself was being limited that he bucked and raged.

Control.

That was what he wanted first and foremost.

Control to wake up every morning and be content with the fact that he wasn't taking a certain path not because he couldn't, but because he had no desire to.

He had had enough money on Earth-why did he need to become a billionaire?

He had no desire to command billions of people, so why would he become a politician?

He had no grand ambition to advance humanity, so why would he join a research field that was anything but interesting to him and him alone?

But now, in this wider world, everything was so much larger.

Was he allowed to become an S-tier? Not if these people had anything to say about it.

Was he allowed to choose what path suited him and live out his life in peace? Not if these people had anything to say about it.

Was he allowed to be Sylas Brown again?

Not if these people had anything to say about it.

He had been searching all the while for these people. Subconsciously, this was the ceiling that he had been looking for.

On Earth, he could see the ceiling clearly, and he didn't care for it. He could achieve it easily, so why bother with the hassle and effort? To prove something he already knew?

But this time... this ceiling...

He couldn't see the limit of it.

He couldn't see the breadth or the scope, he couldn't feel the vastness nor experience the strength. The gap was unfathomable to the point of making the word meaningless, endless to the point of being vacant.

What was nothing if not contrasted by something? How could you have something if it was everything?

For the first time, Sylas seemed to truly understand what the Big Bang was.

How could you pinpoint the start of something if it was, in fact, everything?

Staring into this maw, those flashes of crimson, that endless scape of both nothing and everything, he understood.

He wasn't meant to understand. It was unfathomable to even him, large beyond scope, vast without meaning.

An impossibility, and yet every possibility there was.

It was above them in every meaning of the word, stronger by every sense, smarter by an incomparable measure.

Unfathomable.

This was what those A-tiers saw.

And for the first time in his life, Sylas saw something he didn't know for a fact he could beat.

Something inside of him clicked, and he felt a thrumming, a raging heat, a blood hidden deep within him that bubbled with fervor and surged with might.

It roared from the deepest parts of him as though something he hadn't known was there was awakening.

Sylas smiled.

Not a half-smile, not a slight quirk of his lips, not a curve that came from his mind being in a manipulated state.

A smile that came from him-Sylas Grimblade.

That ceiling. He wanted to see it. He wanted to see between himself and it...

Who was truly better.

BANG.