Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1690 A Single Thought

Sylas scanned the library for a moment before walking to a certain section. Soon, he was standing in front of a panel, his eyes pinging back and forth between a blur of lines, moving faster than even a powerful F-tier like himself should have been able to keep up with.

Before he even made an attempt to learn anything, the first thing he did was memorize the list of books-not just the list, but the categorizations.

It was quite interesting. This world clearly placed great emphasis on their rules. This wasn't the first time he had gained so much just from reading the rules of a world.

In that case, there was much to be learned by focusing on the details.

On Earth, categorization in libraries was actually a very big deal. In fact, there were high-level degrees involving such a thing as well. Even on a world as "primitive" as his home planet, the categorization of information was hugely consequential.

Sylas realized that things would be no different here. He could learn a great deal not just from these books, but in how they were organized across the library.

When one was trying to learn a complex topic, often the hardest decision to make was where to start. Ironically enough, only the best experts on a topic would have the best insights on this matter.

Technically speaking, Sylas was such an expert of the F-tier. But what he wanted was a foundation that could reach beyond the F-tier. He didn't have the scope of understanding an A-tier Rune Master would have.

And he had no troubles at all admitting that.

'I see...'

There were many things in this list that Sylas had never even thought clearly about before. The standout amongst them all was the study of Rune Linkages.

Especially in the F-tier, there was only so much a single Rune could do. You were limited to 100 Foundations, which was further limited to anywhere between two to five hundred Strokes.

When you were building something as complex as a Rune Armor, you would form a Mesh of Runes. This Mesh would be a network of Runes designed to play off of and interact with one another.

The best of Rune Armors acted as though they were just a single large Rune, but in reality, they were created from a sum of multiple smaller parts.

When Sylas learned to craft his Scorpion Warlord Armor, linkages weren't exactly something he focused on. Instead, he focused on making each individual Rune as perfect as possible. So long as you drew every Rune with a single mused in mind, the linkage between them would naturally follow.

But considering the sheer amount of studies the Weaver Guild had on Rune Linkages, Sylas realized that his methods were incorrect.

No... to say they were incorrect didn't make it all clear. His methods clearly worked. They were just missing the most important and key features.

The Rune Linkage teachings weren't just about Rune Armors. Most of them were actually about chaining and using multiple Runes in battle. Some of them taught about how to create makeshift formations that could adapt in real time to any battle situation, or even how to target the weak linkages in another Rune Master's Mesh of Runes.

It was no wonder he struggled so much with E-Grade Runes.

E-Grade Runes weren't just a single order of magnitude more complex than F-Grade Runes, but two.

While F-Grade Runes had a limit of 100 Foundations, E-Grade Runes could be as great as 10,000 Foundations deep.

The more Foundations were involved, the deeper the variety of acute and macro changes. When you were trying to deal with so many variables at once, getting them to work in a Mesh of Runes as complex as one would find in the Scorpion Warlord Armor was next to impossible.

It could be said that the fact Sylas could draw an E-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor at all was absolutely insane.

And yet, despite how important this discipline was, it was only one of the categories.

The second category that caught Sylas' attention was known as Will Priming.

This was another concept Sylas had come into contact with through Rune Armor crafting and yet hadn't fully grasped at all.

Will Priming was a method of using one's Will to prep the world for the creation of a Rune. Spark Masters were known for their ability to spontaneously form Runes, but the mechanism behind it was more than just a thought. Or, rather... it should have been.

Spark Master was the lowest level that allowed this to happen. But the difference between relying on innate Spark Mastery and truly mastering Will Priming was akin to the difference between stumbling around for your first steps as a child and running a marathon.

To put this into proper context, someone adept at Will Priming could get away with having lesser skill in actual Rune Mastery. If you could understand the underlying Will of a Rune and manifest it into the world before attempting to draw, you could boost the success rate of drawing said Rune considerably.

In fact, someone good enough at Will Priming could theoretically draw a Rune they not once had before at 100% Mastery without breaking a sweat.

An offshoot of Will Priming was actually an in-depth study on Will Affinity. Will Priming was especially effective for Runes you had a high level of affinity with.

Meaning, if Sylas had been guided in Will Priming, the amount of effort he had put into learning every individual Rune of Space and Time he had would have been completely unnecessary.

As though all of that wasn't ridiculous enough, theoretically speaking, when you reached a high enough level of Will Priming, you could manifest Runes you had not only never drawn before, but ones you had never even seen before.

If your comprehension of what you wanted to manifest and your affinity with the Rune were high enough, you could craft a Rune that suited your needs perfectly in a given situation with nothing more than a single thought!