Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1855: Shower First

Sylas stared at Cassarae for a protracted while.

"So, let me get this straight. You left incestuous monuments in your wake, and you made Szorn do it?"

"Well, I wasn't going to fucking do it myself, now was I? That's gross."

Sylas stared at her for a while longer. "Who?"

"It doesn't matter all that much, does it?"

"Not really. If you managed to get out, and their old were so susceptible to being manipulated in such a way, it's doubtful they're powerful enough to care about."

"Hey, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you calling me weak?"

Sylas only stared back, and Cassarae's smile became dangerous once again.

"I seem to remember my Will breaking someone else's. And I'm just a tiny level 0. You have a lot of shit to talk for someone who just got their ass handed to them by an F-tier."

"Mm." Sylas nodded, thinking about Cassarae's Sword Aura.

He hadn't missed the fact she'd lost her Will Titles. But the reason he didn't react to it was because he had noticed something more shocking.

She hadn't lost the Titles-they had evolved.

Her Will Title had evolved into Sword Aura. Her Will was her Sword, and her Sword was her Will. They were one and the same now, without distinction.

Sylas hadn't known that was possible. But he was also quite sure that he couldn't follow the same path either.

Doing so would require basically giving up his path of Rune Mastery-or essentially making it so that he could only draw Runes directly related to the sword, or whatever path it was he ended up choosing.

The path Cassarae had taken took dedicating her entire being to a single path. Sylas couldn't do that, not if he wanted to continue reaching for the pinnacle of Rune Mastery.

Sylas had seen some of this in the Weaver Guild, though. There were many sections of the libraries heavily dedicated to a singular path. None were as narrow as a sword, for example, but there were Rune Masters that focused entirely on building one particular type of weapon or treasure-some that focused on large-scale infrastructure or defensive formations, or others that focused on widespread attack formations.

There was a seemingly endless amount of depth in every path, and from what Sylas could see from the Weaver Guild, they encouraged specialization where possible.

It had made Sylas realize that he had yet to battle a true Rune Master, but if he had, the sort of battle he was expecting probably wasn't the sort he would get.

He liked to think a lot that the Rune Masters of the Sanctums weren't true Rune Masters, but instead Will Masters. In fact, many of them embraced that as well.

But were they truly so far from real Will Mastery? It was just that rather than specializing in Rune Armors as a whole like a Rune Master might, they focused their entire being on a single sort of Rune Armor.

Sylas had no interest in specializing.

He knew if he dedicated himself, he could become among the best alchemists—or among the best blacksmiths, or anything else beyond. But... If he focused too much on one thing, he would miss the forest for the trees.

"The forest for the trees..." Sylas said absentmindedly.

"What?" Cassarae asked. Her voice trailed off when she saw the glow in Sylas' eyes, though. The ring of gold was so bright it nearly felt as though it might manifest into beams that cut across the ground.

Every tier of Rune Mastery had its limits. A perfect E-tier Rune had 10,000 Foundations, but a perfect F-tier Rune only had 100. A perfect D-tier Rune was already more than a hundred orders of magnitude beyond that at over a million.

The numbers only became more exaggerated—growing at a continuously accelerating exponential rate.

Rune Armors like the Scorpion Warlord Armor didn't break this rule. They just used methods of making these smaller, segmented Runes work together in tandem toward the same goal, combining mainstay Runes with linkage Runes.

One part acted to form the main functions, while the underlying layers worked to smooth the transition and act almost like the switches on a circuit board.

Every Rune was individually capable of something, but together they formed a much larger effect. Almost like a large-scale formation but on a smaller scale.

Each one of these Runes was also drawn with a single thought and essence in mind. This was why the first thing Gralith ever taught Sylas were the 10 basic Strokes of the Scorpion Warlord Language. By understanding that language and the Will behind them, you could then proceed to draw any Rune of the Armor.

In fact, Sylas felt that he had gotten to the point that if he saw the basic Strokes of any Rune Armor of the Beast Sanctum, so long as he comprehended the Will behind them, he could craft any Rune Armor from scratch without even seeing the full legacy.

At least, he could do that at the F-tier. His Void Rune Mastery was that powerful.

But that was why he was so confused when he separated the Legendary Luck Gene. There was no link between them at all, and the individual Runes were utter nonsense. There didn't even seem to be a proper division between the main Runes and the links at all. They seemed to overlap randomly and without cause or reason.

Now, though... Sylas was asking himself one simple question:

'When has the universe ever cared about the division between F-tier and S?'

Cassarae squealed as she was suddenly pulled over Sylas' shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"You are NOT fucking me while you're covered in blood!"

Sylas ignored her, strolling right into the bathroom, kicking the shower and tub faucets on with a push of his telekinesis.

"GO SHOWER WITHOUT ME FIRST!"

Cassarae was pinned to a wall. She found herself staring into Sylas' eyes, barely managing to touch the floor with the tips of her toes. The hand he had on her neck wasn't giving her much more breathing room than that.

"You really know how to romance a girl-" she said sarcastically. But that sarcastic edge was already being ebbed by a sultry undertone... then completely erased by her own gasp.