Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2071: Saboteur (1) [Bonus]

[Bonus chapter thanks to chronotitan <3]

There hadn't been any obvious issues with Benny's actions back then. He had, indeed, stopped the woman from making the wrong decision, and the fact he wanted to cooperate and vote on their choices was probably the correct one if all things were equal.

The trouble was mainly twofold.

First, Benny had reacted far too quickly, more quickly than even Sylas. Was that partially because Sylas hadn't expected space to be so restricted? Benny was still far too fast.

He would have had to not only register the fact the woman was making the wrong choice, but already decide that it was best to stop her even if it might cost him an ally and make him come off as aggressive to the other parties.

The reason why this wasn't enough to conclude anything, though, was because maybe Benny hadn't deduced anything and he just felt it was foolish to leave his life up to someone else's unilateral decision.

But then there was the second glaring issue.

They were clearly in a time crunch and Benny's words all seemed to point to wanting to slow things down even as one of their teammates was suffocating.

If not for Sylas' quick solve, the woman might have actually died.

Of course, while this was enough for Sylas to be suspicious, the reason he didn't care to kill the man was because even if the man was being genuine, Sylas had no interest in a "vote".

Teamwork wasn't exactly something that got his blood going.

Still, everything was pretty much confirmed for Sylas when he got to the second round. That was because the Sachi also made a quick and wrong decision.

Therein lied the problem, though.

The Golmara thought that Sylas was the entire reason the Sachi died and had become extremely wary of him. But in reality, Sylas was at most 30% of the reason the Sachi died.

The last puzzle they solved was basically just pattern recognition. The clues were etched right into how the cubes were stacked.

The only way for the cubes to reach a state of equilibrium was by matching the pattern of the cube stacks.

The trouble was that you couldn't spin the cubes. As such, you had to guess what the other four sides of the cubes were based on the two you could see and then arrange them as such.

Since no cube could be spun and twisted, you were actually looking for and accounting for two patterns at the same time, not just one.

When the wrong cube was put in place, there was a strong repulsion that could lead to a dangerous backlash.

The more cubes were involved, the more violent the backlash.

And there was the key. When the Sachi went, only Sylas had gone up to that point, so only two cubes would have been involved. There would have been some backlash, but not enough to kill her.

Sylas managed to take advantage of the disruption and distortion in the air to regain some of his spatial control, resulting in the woman being pushed into the abyss and likely to her death.

To this point, everything made perfect sense. So why was Sylas hesitating about how to approach things?

The main problem was that every time, sabotage put you in direct line of danger.

The first room was less obvious because Sylas had direct hand in killing him. But if you considered about it, the saboteur would have to survive the oxygen deprivation and Aether disruption of the waters as well.

And in the second room, if the Sachi tried to sabotage much later on down the line, the resulting backlash would have killed them all.

Now that Sylas was, himself, a saboteur, he knew for a fact that there weren't any special protections. He would have to somehow survive and kill everyone else at the same time?

Something about this wasn't passing the sniff test.

[Sabotage the efforts of your teammates in order to survive]

There didn't seem to be any clues in the message either. All it said was sabotage the efforts of your teammates in order to survive.

Sylas' eyes narrowed.

The only oddity about this statement was that it was exceptionally vague about what it meant. What did it mean by "efforts"? If it wanted him to make his teammates fail the room, shouldn't it just say that clearly?

However, Sylas wasn't sure. It felt like he was picking at straws now only because he was already sure something was wrong.

This Dungeon wasn't exactly normal. The system messages associated with it might also be twisted.

Sylas thought of several possibilities but nothing conclusive came.

'There's only one way. Play the game.'

Now that Sylas knew there weren't any other saboteurs with him since the game-in all likelihood-only picked one at a time, he just allowed the others to take their turns.

This time, the Golmara went first.

The group stood in a field covered in tiny bumps separated out into one by one meter squares. Most of them were probably bombs, and there was only one path out.

Everyone had to take turns as the vanguard, choosing three squares to step through.

The problem with that, obviously, was the fact that the moment the first one of them triggered a bomb, the others would be close enough to go up with them.

The worst part? It would almost certainly cause a chain reaction.

It didn't take a genius to know that the moment a chain reaction of bombs from an A-tier Dungeon went up, it was taking C-tiers like them-and certainly an E-tier like Sylas-with it.

How could you even sabotage a game like this one without being suicidal?

The Golmara took his time, choosing one of the mines to start on, and then taking a step forward, then one to the

left.

And then it was Sylas' turn. He didn't get a choice. His body was grabbed by a mysterious energy and then placed right in the same square that the Golmara had picked last.