Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1778: Frigid

The whistle pressed to Sylas' lips shattered to pieces, shredding his lips apart and nearly taking out a decent chunk of his skull. It could be said that he was fractions of inches from dying from that backlash alone, but he hadn't.

He realized the problem instantly, and he deduced it even faster.

There was a moment where the world fell into a pause, and Sylas could only stand there in silence.

He had been completely drained when he started this process. The only reason he didn't go and rest first was because he knew that with how fatigued he was, he would need more than the three days' rest he had had when he first returned.

If he fell asleep now, it might very well take him another week to wake up.

He had already used more than a week on the Cryst Emperor, and between his three-day rest and the time he had spent to get to this point in his understanding of technology, he had taken another three weeks. He just didn't have the time to fall asleep for another week, not if he wanted to be ready and able for when Earth's Summoning was completed.

This had been just fine to him because he knew that with A-Grade Medley, his healing factor would be off the charts. As good as [Maddened Enlightenment] was normally, it would be several orders of magnitude better now.

But now A-Grade Medley had not only shattered, it had almost killed him.

Then right on cue, the power of Call of the Titan flooded Sylas' body. It wasn't violent. In fact, it was quite soothing and calming. But Sylas knew that this was just the beginning.

It was only now beginning to pry into the mysteries of Reaper Sealwright. Slowly, it would force him to think, and from thinking, it would force him to consider concepts that went deeper and deeper until he was being suppressed with concepts so wide-ranging and suffocating that even his mind wouldn't be able to keep up.

But if it was just that alone, maybe Sylas would feel like he had a chance. He had great belief in his own mental capacity.

The issue was that even if by some miracle his brain expanded by millions of times in order to withstand all of this new information, the world he had become used to in the last two years or so wasn't so simple.

How would he withstand the Will of Reaper Sealwright? What would he do when B-, A-, even S-tier Runes began to appear? It was already going to be a close call with A-Grade Medley-what would he do without it?

There should have been panic on Sylas' expression already. But there wasn't. Instead, there was a coldness that only seemed to be growing more frigid.

How long could he withstand things like this?

If he were at his full capacity, he bet that he could hold on into the D-tier, and probably for at least 60 or 70% of it. But right now, he perhaps only had until midway through the E-tier at best.

This difference didn't seem large enough, but it had to be remembered that there were exponential differences between the Tiers. Sixty to seventy percent of the D-tier was probably hundreds to thousands of times more complex than just making it halfway through the E-tier.

And, if Sylas factored in the fact that he would certainly need to divert some of his thoughts toward finding a way out of this, maybe he would be lucky to make it through 20 or 30% of the E-tier at best.

What to do?

The Omnimous watched from the sidelines. It felt that this was unfortunate, but though it had forgotten much, it was sure that it had suffered the loss of several owners before.

It also didn't have the full scope of its memories to understand how Sylas stacked up to all of them. So for all it knew, it had had several Sylases in the past.

Either way, there was no such thing as an expert who hadn't gone through some hardship at least. If Sylas managed to survive, maybe his timeline to improvement would be loosened.

However, if not for the access the Omnimous had to Sylas' mind, it would have thought he had already given up. The trouble was that with Call of the Titan active, this access was limited even for the Omnimous.

It was constantly getting a stream of information about Reaper Sealwright it had to purge, as this information was useless to it. Its program wouldn't allow it to keep it.

But that meant it couldn't see through the sea of information to Sylas' core thoughts as easily as before.

It probably had the best seat to the chaos other than Sylas himself, but it was out of the loop. So, it wasn't quite sure why Sylas hadn't done anything yet.

But Sylas continued to stand there.

His thoughts probably should have been focused on finding a solution, but they were in one part focused on Reaper Sealwright, and another part on a single question.

How had he made this mistake?

What was the issue in his process? How had he accounted for so much and yet missed this?

Was it a lack of information? Maybe.

But that was only part of it.

Was it really possible to be All-Knowing? To have a mind that had every bit of information in it?

Maybe.

But that wouldn't have guaranteed that this didn't happen.

How much you knew was only as valuable as how much you understood. And how much you understood was only as valuable as your processing capability. And your processing capability was only as valuable as your ability to prioritize.

One of the most difficult things to do as an expert was to explain to a layman orders of magnitude and prioritization. Two poisons might be able to kill you, but how they did so and how quickly were two vastly different things.

An equation might be listed before you, but would you do addition or multiplication first?

The truth was that Sylas could have guessed this would happen if he had spared some time to think about it. But he never had, because he didn't have a good feel for prioritization-and it was hard to know exactly how to prioritize when you didn't have a full scope of understanding of everything there was.

What was the largest lens he could use? The widest scope? The best Swiss Army knife in his toolkit?

"Runes."

The moment he had the mused, Reaper Sealwright's Call of the Titan broke through E-tier, and the information became exponentially more complex.

Sylas was already running out of time, a bulging sensation beginning to form from the corners of his skull... corners that probably shouldn't have existed.

Blood poured out from the corner of Sylas' mouth, his ship shaking as his brain faltered. A bit of Call of the Titan leaked. For the first time, it was unable to find full purchase on Sylas' mind, and the result of just a small leak nearly threw the entire ship off course.

And yet, the deathly chill in Sylas' eyes was still only growing more frigid.