Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1698 Fanelei (1) [Bonus]

[Bonus chapter thanks to Ricky_D_Reader :)]

One of the very first things Sylas heard about Fanelei when he arrived in this place was the disaster it was every time she woke up. Something about chefs from across the galaxy losing their minds due to her appetite.

It was an odd detail, but nothing Sylas thought too much about. His own appetite was enormous, and that was without having much of a fondness for food-especially not compared to his sister.

Sylas had always been disciplined. He at no time overate, and never ate anything he deemed to be unhealthy, often giving his little sister his dessert over the years.

However, after he started growing much stronger, his body needed more sustenance or fuel, so he began to eat more. In fact, he even had a Gene Skill related to eating as well. If one didn't eat a lot with this level of strength, they would actually regress.

If someone like Fanelei spent a great amount of time in seclusion, maybe she went long periods of time without food, or maybe without food of a high quality. So when she finally did come out, she would make a huge deal of returning to her baseline.

Of course, it was also possible that she was simply a foodie. Sylas didn't need to be on Earth to know that his little sister was probably giving their own chefs fits too, and she wasn't a Gluttony Disciple. Trying to make a conclusion based on such a thing didn't make any sense.

It certainly wasn't enough to take a risk on this level. But it was enough for Sylas to raise an eyebrow.

But then Sylas remembered something else. He had found it odd that Fanelei had Will to sense him on Earth back then. Originally, he had dismissed it because he mused that she was probably just looking after her granddaughter. However... the 002 Sanctum was extremely far from the Milky Way Sector.

Sylas had explained this by raising Fanelei's abilities up on a pedestal, believing that her senses were simply that powerful. However, even back then he knew that there were problems with that conclusion, namely the fact that as a Summoned World, Earth was very much protected from exactly this sort of detection.

The reason Sylas hadn't dismissed this conclusion back then, though, was because Earth was targeted by so many parties, and his belief in the impotent system couldn't be said to be the best in the first place. The number of mistakes it had made that directly affected him were too numerous to count at this point.

The idea that Fanelei might have had an opportunity to circumvent this wasn't impossible.

That said... usually, if one wanted to circumvent the system, regardless of how impotent it was, it should take forethought and planning at the very least.

How could Fanelei have found him by coincidence? She should have been looking for him specifically, for whatever reason that might have been.

Individually, Sylas could wave away these two matters and leave it be. But together, his skepticism went from an eyebrow raise to a sharpening of his gaze.

Even so, that still wasn't enough to do something like this. At most, Sylas would have kept an eye out and waited to see if there was anything else that stood out.

But then Fanelei made him her Legacy Disciple. It wasn't the action itself that was the problem, but the underlying reasons as to why.

She seemed very intent on protecting him, and there was definitely something that she was gaining from it. Sylas just couldn't put his finger on what that was...

Then he had felt that ceiling and he understood.

That ceiling, those flashing bolts of crimson lightning-they reminded him so much of the Scorned Wraps. It felt as though the flames were only a precursor to those bolts. In fact, he even felt that the lightning that struck Gogo's Ancestor down from the skies might very well be tied to this crimson lightning in some way.

Things like Karma and Will were all so very intertwined, and while he was experiencing that lightning, Sylas sensed a small gap in Fanelei's veneer.

In order to stop the entire planet from shutting down and save Sylas from imploding, Fanelei had no choice but to take action. Back then, she had taken him in as a Legacy Disciple through the system, using the interruption to sever the hold the Runes of their tower had on Sylas' Will.

This had been the easiest and quickest way to do things. If she instead tried to shut down the Runes themselves, the process would be very involved, and the system of the guild itself was too wide in scope for even a Legend to manage on her own.

So, Fanelei had no choice but to do the equivalent of a shutdown, and the only thing powerful enough to do that was the impotent system.

The problem with that, of course, was that she had to use her own Will to do that.

That would have been fine enough. After all, Sylas was too weak to sense her Will clearly, so he wouldn't have been able to make the connection. Unfortunately for Fanelei, Sylas sensed the ceiling of the world not long later, resulting in a situation where her spirit incarnation was torn to pieces.

In that moment of clarity, while Fanelei's spirit was withstanding the destruction of the ceiling of the world in Sylas' stead, for the first time, Sylas finally sensed her Will clearly.

That was when he was certain-that was when Fanelei could no longer hide from him.

The little girl and Fanelei were one and the same.

One might wonder why this knowledge meant that Sylas had won. After all, Fanelei was still countless orders of magnitude more powerful than himself. And even if he planned on using the Thryskai to escape, there was no need to reveal that he had this information. Wouldn't it be better to keep it in his back pocket?

Plus... Sylas wasn't the sort of person to rely on someone else to escape. So what was he doing?