Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1781: Clarity

The Omnimous had seen this method many times in far weaker technological societies. It was colloquially known as the "brute force" method.

Essentially, many weak societies in their infancy couldn't manage to form true general intelligence Als, so they settled for brute force instead. They fed the Al a large amount of information, and while this Al couldn't think, it could recognize patterns and optimize them into an answer.

Sylas seemed to be doing that right now, but it was an idiotic method. After the genius he had displayed before, the Omnimous couldn't help but find this approach to be ridiculous. Why didn't he just use the multi-brains the normal way?

Even if Sylas had known the thoughts of the Omnimous, though, he would have hardly reacted to them. He had always measured himself by his own thoughts. Intergalactic, great ancient intelligence or not... he didn't care.

He knew what his own goals were.

'I see...'

When Sylas first comprehended Willborne Intelligence, he had done it perfunctorily.

It was hard for someone else to fathom just what that meant, but Sylas hadn't formed it a great priority for himself, so after he grasped it, he accepted the result and moved on.

But he didn't really fully feel the answer.

When he formed Willborne Charisma, it was set to naturally progress across the Tiers. When he became an E-tier, a D-tier, or beyond, it would progress along with him without issue.

This was because Charisma and Will were already very much tied to one another. It could be said that while Willborne Charisma wasn't the most common of the Willborne stats, it was the most natural and the one that required the least amount of maintenance.

By comparison, Willborne Intelligence was far more finicky.

Charisma was defined by Will in the first place. It was a measure of how well your Will could influence the world. The higher your Charisma, the further your Will stat went.

However, Intelligence wasn't tied to Will at all.

No, that wasn't true. Rather, its connection was a lot more subtle.

Intelligence was a measure of not only how much Aether you had, but also your sense for Aether and how well you could control it.

Unfortunately, Wisdom also dictated how well you could control Aether. It was just that Wisdom likewise dictated how well you could control a lot of other things as well.

These differences were subtle. The system was an existence making an attempt to parse the complexities of the body into defined stats, when in action, evolution, life, and existence itself were far too complex to be so easily defined by eight numbers. Nine if Luck was included.

By now, Sylas' thought process was a bit easier to grasp.

If Sylas wanted something like Willborne Wisdom, he needed a method of ensuring he could draw a clear line between it and his Willborne Intelligence.

At that point, he would have Willborne Intelligence and Willborne Charisma, leaving only a single one of the Mental Stats unaccounted for.

Sure, the Omnimous was correct about the brute force method being highly lacking. However, there was one thing that the brute force method was very good at.

Pattern recognition.

Sylas needed to be able to recognize what was Intelligence and what was Wisdom with a single glance.

As one multi-brain after another was "wasted," Sylas gradually raised a hand.

He pressed it down and a Legendary Wisdom Gene bloomed. He pressed it down again and another formed. He repeated the action again, and again, and then again.

But on the dozenth attempt, the Legendary Wisdom Gene was no longer of the F-tier. It morphed into one of the E- tier.

Sylas directly skipped over Common, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. A journey that had taken him over a year in the F- tier was completed in a single instant at the E-tier.

But it wasn't good enough.

It took him two hours to finish drawing the E-tier Legendary Gene.

He raised his hand and did it again.

'He's...'

The Omnimous was surprised once again.

Sylas was doing too many things that relied on his Will. Drawing E-tier Runes at the F-tier should have been the end of him, but it wasn't.

The Omnimous quickly realized that this was because Sylas was relying on Primus Luminaria and Spark Mastery.

Sylas wasn't actively drawing at all. He was using the understanding of Wisdom the multi-brains were supplying him with and projecting that into his Will. Then, using Primus Luminaria's ability to draw Runes beyond his Will, he was triggering their creation at almost no cost to himself.

But why?

Even if Sylas could draw an E-tier Legendary Wisdom Gene, what good did it do him?

Sylas drew another, and then another. Soon, an entire day had gone by and Sylas had used up all the runway he had gotten himself by slowing the integration of Call of the Titan.

And it seemed as though he had nothing to show for it but a single perfect E-tier Legendary Wisdom Gene...

One that he suddenly pressed into his body.

The Omnimous was taken aback again. Sylas was an F-tier. He couldn't take on an E-tier Gene, let alone an E-tier Legendary one. Even if he had Primus Imperium, it was still impossible.

Just because Primus Imperium let you absorb Genes a tier above yours, didn't mean that there weren't limits.

Sylas used the fact that he could absorb E-tier Runes now in order to allow himself to absorb far more powerful F- tier Runes. But if he tried to absorb E-tier Runes, Common would probably be his limit. He didn't have the Gene Capacity to succeed in absorbing a higher-level one, at least not at the F-tier.

It was a good thing, then, that Sylas never expected to succeed in the first place.

'This is... a Gene Manipulation Profession. Rare.'

Sylas wasn't relying on the system to absorb the Gene. He pressed it into his chest. As expected, the Gene shattered on impact. However... A flood of understanding of Wisdom poured into him from head to toe.

At the same time, he was flooded with a wave of clarity.