Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1782: Control

The moment Sylas felt that wave of clarity, he was already pressing his Will down onto the multi-brains. All at once, he formed an entanglement between them and his own mind, oscillating between them quickly.

He absorbed one understanding of Willborne Intelligence after another.

No, more accurately, he was observing different methods of reaching Willborne Intelligence, each one distinct from the last. At the same time, the more methods of comprehending Willborne Intelligence he went through, the more defined the separation between it and Wisdom became to him.

Willborne Intelligence was far more complex than Willborne Charisma. The root of Charisma was the self, but the root of Intelligence was Aether, and Aether was the energy of the universe and was fundamentally formed of an external Will, not an internal one.

So if Aether wasn't yours to begin with, how could it be borne from your Will? How could you take responsibility for energy that you commandeered but hadn't birthed?

It seemed contradictory.

The simplest answer was that Intelligence was related to Aether, but wasn't Aether itself. It was ultimately a stat of the mind. It spoke of how one interacted with Aether, not of how Aether interacted with you.

About a third of Sylas' answers fell into this category of answers. It was the simplest understanding to reach, and it was probably the understanding that the vast majority of Cryst Emperors had.

However, it still wasn't the vast majority of Sylas' conclusions. Sylas didn't tend to think the way normal people thought. His thoughts tended to venture outside the box very often, so the majority of his own fell into another box of thinking.

Intelligence was quite an unusual name.

Words were incredibly important to the system. Yet, it translated the name of this stat into something that could be so easily confused with Wisdom.

Even when Sylas used Ancient Ithkuil to translate his status screens again, the result was still much the same. However, the interesting difference was exactly how the system usually translated Intelligence and Wisdom.

Intelligence was a measure of raw knowledge. Wisdom was a measure of how well you could apply that knowledge.

This was fine. After all, this was mostly similar to the definitions that the people of Earth had for these words, and Sylas assumed that this was the same for many other worlds of the universe as well.

But that didn't explain why these names were chosen. Why were such important stats given such... odd names?

A measure of raw knowledge...

And that was when Sylas thought of Glassvolt. Or, more accurately, the first time he ran into lightning Aether due to a certain invading Race of Earth.

Back then, he had managed to use science and his understanding of chemistry to overwhelm that opponent, directing and controlling their lightning even better than they could, all because he knew how to take advantage of polarities.

And then Sylas thought of his own path of Aether Mancy. How had he progressed?

Well... all he had really done was study Runes, no? When he first formed his Ice Poison affinity, it was because he was observing a world of Runes and happened to choose his Slow Rune and Freeze Rune. That had eventually grown into not only his current Glassvolt Cryst Emperor status... But that was also where his Archon Casting had started.

The Slow Rune became the foundation of his Time affinity, while his Freeze Rune became the foundation of his Space affinity.

All of this was interconnected and made things far more complicated than usual, but right now, the details of this were only as important as they proved one thing... Intelligence didn't lie with its name. In fact, the name held a secret that could be whispered by the universe itself.

Aether was nothing more than the fundamental units of energy of the universe. That was why they could be born from Runes, and Runes born from strong enough Rune Mastery spontaneously attracted Aether all on their own.

This was to say that things like affinity and talent for Aether were all smoke and mirrors.

Even without the slightest hint of talent, so long as one had enough knowledge about a given Aether... you could control it better than the greatest talent there was.

BOOM.

Sylas' body shook, radiant light wafting from him.

He would no longer need higher-tier Glassvolt Crysts to continue forming higher-level Willborne Intelligence. From now on, his Intelligence would forever be tied to his Will just like his Charisma was.

This conclusion was over 60% of the paths taken by Sylas' multi-brains. It was just like Sylas to come to the more complex and perfect solution the majority of the time. However, there was still one conclusion remaining, one that Sylas had reached less than 10% of the time, but he had come to enough times that it more than caught his attention.

Even as his Willborne Intelligence built a final breakthrough, Sylas didn't waver or seem happy in the slightest. The larger picture of what he was trying to do was still obscure, and he had already run out of time seemingly, but he was so focused he didn't seem to notice.

This last and final conclusion he reached about Willborne Intelligence was very odd... it was one related to control.

The trouble with this one was that it overlapped with Wisdom far too much. Control was exactly the answer that more than 90% of conclusions that Sylas had reached left for Wisdom.

However, it was the answer Sylas liked the most nonetheless despite the fact it muddied the waters.

If the second answer spoke of using deep understanding to grasp Aether and manage Intelligence, this answer took it one step forward.

You didn't just need to understand Aether, you needed to go as far as to master its creation, to forge it with an iron Will that didn't rely on the world at all.

It was a comprehension that not just allowed you to pull Aether from one's surroundings, but to forcefully rip apart energies of other forms and constructs to form the Aether that you wanted.

Control.

It was the one thing Sylas wanted more than anything else.

Something broke and the world reacted with violence and upheaval.