Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1713 Three

Sylas suddenly tilted his head to the side as an arrow of emerald suddenly formed and shot toward him. It was so fast that had he not acted before his reflexes told him to, he would have already lost his head.

To his side, Salivar reached out a hand and caught it from the air, shattering it to pieces.

"You're still alive?" Salivar asked with a toothy grin. "Interesting. Stay alive, then. I'd love to take your head for myself."

BANG.

With a stomp of his foot, he shot out, entering the maze so fast that in a breath of time, he was already gone.

Sylas' eyes narrowed. Salivar was powerful-truly powerful, even as an F-tier.

Of course, this wasn't perfect. There was no way that Salivar wasn't benefitting, at least in part, from being an E- tier as well. But Sylas couldn't rush this.

Before he had come, he had also studied all the variations on the Seeing Eye Guild's methods of testing. This test, the Emerald Maze, was quite straightforward.

The arrows that formed now were the most immediate and obvious danger. They would spontaneously form from the Aether in the air. However, if it were that simple, this wouldn't be among the most dangerous of the tests. The fact that Salivar was confident enough to head off so speedy painted its own picture of just how strong he was.

While those arrows seemed spontaneous, it wasn't exactly like that. Instead, they were quite targeted otherwise, they wouldn't have nearly taken Sylas' head off just now.

They formed for the purpose of stealing and snatching Aether. Essentially, the Maze was able to sense Aether- forming existences and took them as targets to prey on.

The unique crystal here was known as Envy Aether Crystal. It formed an Aether with a propensity to lust after all the Aether it could, consuming it, converting it, and then turning it into its own strength.

This was the end of the explanation, technically... but this Envy Aether fascinated Sylas for other reasons.

Regardless of which test it was, Sylas had his own opinions of how to perform well on them, and this one was no different. And luckily for him, he had a Virtue Madness Key around his neck with access to information and details maybe even the Seeing Eye Guild didn't have.

What caught his attention about Envy Aether was how... alive it felt.

The maze here wasn't artificial. It was the product of the Envy Aether learning and adapting to its environment, learning how best to lure in its targets, weaken them, and then take advantage of them.

The Envy Aether was the perfect example of a microcosm of evolution. It wasn't an intelligent existence. All it wanted was to devour more Aether, and as a result, it morphed and changed itself based on that sole, expressed purpose.

By balancing its need for more Aether with its desire to keep as much as possible, the end result was a maze like this one.

The Aether knew that if it just formed a box and trapped everyone within, things wouldn't work out in its favor. Every time a new person appeared, it would have to open itself up, and then hope that said person would be stupid enough to take a step inside. Then it would have to close itself up and hope the individual had enough Aether to make up for the amount it had just used.

But, if it was instead a maze like this, allowing paths for people to walk through, not only would people be more likely to take on the difficulty, but the time they would spend on the inside would give the Envy Aether more time to slowly whittle away at this person, allowing it to use up less energy while gaining more in return.

The more people that went through its maze, the more it adapted and changed, and the more difficult the next runs became. In fact, because the difficulty could get so high, the Seeing Eye Guild had no choice but to trim and artificially lower the difficulty at times.

If allowed free rein to improve and evolve, this maze of F-grade Aether Crystal could become an impossible trap to escape from even for a relatively powerful E-tier.

It was truly a fascinating existence.

It was just too bad that it was facing Sylas.

Sylas took a step forward, walking leisurely. For a moment, it looked like he was about to walk right into a wall...

Until it just happily opened up for him.

The dichotomy was striking.

Salivar, to his credit, was taking things quite seriously. He knew what was at stake. He was dodging attacks, zipping through peaks and valleys, rounding corners, memorizing lanes, and even doubling back only to press forward again.

The complexity of the maze wasn't small, and the Seeing Eye Guild had allowed one of the stronger mazes to appear here to give Sylas a hard time... And yet Sylas was just... walking straight.

As though to paint the picture as vividly as possible, Sylas wasn't even shrinking space. One step came after another, evenly spaced and slow in gait.

His breathing wasn't rushed or hurried, his heart rate as even as could be.

At a point like this, it would be a wonder if anyone thought anything other than that he was cheating. But not only did the system not react-even the internal system of the Seeing Eye Guild had nothing at all to say.

And then, just three hours of a leisurely stroll later, Sylas approached to the end of the maze.

He looked up, then to the side as though to double-check Salivar wasn't there. But he already knew that he wouldn't be.

The record for even a freshly pruned Envy Aether Maze was seven hours. One like this was definitely on the higher end of the spectrum, likely classified as an elite challenge by the internal metrics of the Seeing Eye Guild. It would

have a record of 14 hours.

Sylas did it in three.

He walked out.