Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2059: Sorrows

Fanelei was in a bit of a daze as she walked back into the room with Leia struggling under her arm. She didn't know what Sylas planned to do, but it was getting to the point that things were a bit ridiculous.

Was this really something that Sylas was capable of?

She had grown to the point she knew better than to think that Sylas couldn't do something he had said he would. But even so, to be accepting of it was just...

Leia fell to the ground as Fanelei let her go.

"Grandmother!"

Fanelei squatted down and clamped Leia's cheeks with a single hand, pulling her chin toward her.

"Listen here, Leia. I've been very patient with you. Too patient, maybe. But right now is not the time for you to be willful."

"HE KILLED--!"

"I already looked into the matter. Maybe it was truly the sort of love that could last a lifetime, I would understand how you feel. But this was a woman who used you like a tool. If you insist on being foolish for a love that wasn't even reciprocated, I will banish you from the family right here and now."

Leia froze, her grandmother's words seemed serious, serious to the point the Will itself seeped into Leia's very psyche. There wasn't an ounce of hesitation or a lie in her words at all.

Fanelei yanked Leia up by her chin and pushed her with a palm to her back toward Sylas.

Stumbling to a stop, Leia looked up at Sylas with a wave of complicated emotions she couldn't seem to restrain. She clenched her fists, biting down hard before looking toward the ground.

Sylas didn't seem to care all that much at all. The only reason he was choosing Leia for this was because if he ignored what was the obvious mistake of her last life, Leia's path ahead was set by Fanelei.

The path, thus, was actually one that followed the path of Gluttony quite well.

From the very beginning, this had been Fanelei's path. She had added Madness to it because it was the only way for her to touch upon the level that she was well and truly seeking. But even without Madness, her path fit in quite well with Gluttony.

Ironically enough, Sylas' own sister was very similar to this as well-meaning she also followed Gluttony without the additions brought on by Madness. In fact, this was probably why Fanelei had tried to take Elara in as a disciple back then, only to stop because Sylas hadn't allowed it.

Regardless, Leia's path fit in with Gluttony well, so she could thus sense it more clearly than anyone else.

Sylas slowly pressed his palms together and Runes began to dance in the surroundings. Slowly but surely, those Runes became images, images that Sylas recognized all too well for reasons that went beyond the fact he was the one who actually created them.

The images formed into dancing snakes, and then serpents lost in battle, and then lust, a wild, ranging mesh of the reality of Serpentes before they were stripped of their pride and hurled down from the skies above.

Leia's eyes went wide, and then glazed over.

In that moment, Sylas reached a palm forward and touched her forehead. A ripple passed and Leia felt a great pressure descend onto her Will, forcing it to adapt and change.

She had never known it was possible to directly influence someone else's Will like this. It perceived suffocating and gross in ways she couldn't respond directly to. Even when she tried to fight back against it, her mind only fell into a greater daze.

'This can work.' Sylas thought to himself.

Every time he thought he had seen what the limit of Rune Mastery was, he took a peek and found there was a higher level.

In this case, once again, it wasn't a higher level, but instead a higher form of Rune application, one that he had been studying for a while now.

Will Manipulation.

It made Sylas realize that he had exerted far more effort to change the Wills of the disciples of The Sanctum than he had needed to.

A Serpent Armor bloomed across Leia's body and suddenly she realized that she didn't want to fight anymore. Tears fell down her cheeks, her body feeling like it was being wrapped in a feeling of warmth she remembered all too well.

She knew her grandmother was right. She knew that Robareda had never really cared about anyone but herself, or the next bit of power she could attract. But that didn't change the fact that Leia had loved her.

The problem with having every aspect of your progression controlled by someone else was that you never truly felt free. Maybe it was just an act of rebellion, but Robareda had made her feel alive. It was the only thing in her life that wasn't going as planned, the only thing she couldn't just use her talent to worm her way into.

She hadn't even been able to join the Serpent Lineage, and could only join the Lion Lineage because it was the only thing her Will could properly replicate.

But now, she was finally feeling the essence of the Serpentes, and it made her cry.

She realized that Robareda had never been a true Serpentes in the first place. And yet, the fact it made her feel so emotional meant that her love was never for Robareda herself. Otherwise, how could something the latter never even represented make her this emotional?

Leia sobbed, her shoulders quaking as she mourned love she not ever truly experienced in the first place.

Her body convulsed, but her Will was only on a single track forward.

Honestly, she just wanted to eat her sorrows away... food.

Food had always been good. It was so soothing.

And there was nothing like facing off against a man ten times your size and eating him under the table anyway.

The world shook.