Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2073: Successful

When everything cleared, Sylas was standing in the middle of a field of nothingness, wiping down his clothing without a care in the world.

The woman and the Golmara were both dead. Whether they had understood what was happening in the final moments or not had little to do with him.

He didn't feel the need to show off to people it had nothing to do with.

[Sabotage Successful. You will move on to the next round.]

The goal wasn't just to sabotage, it was to do so in a way that left you as the only one living and breathing. After Sylas found one solution to something, he usually stopped looking because he hadn't had to do much else. But that didn't mean there wasn't more than one solution or more than one way to do things.

In reality, the first and second rooms hadn't had more than one solution, but they had had a quasi secondary solution meant specifically for the saboteur.

There was no real need to relitigate what those solutions would have been in rooms one and two, but in room three, the moment Sylas saw that there was more than one solution, he deduced everything else.

In reality, he was only able to do so with such ease because his Rune Mastery was off the charts. He was able to see that there wasn't just one path to the end, but two, and both of them could be detected with different methods.

The real crux of everything, though, was the fact that the others had completely missed it.

There was no "safe" path. Every single one of the squares had a mine within it. So long as you chose one path and stuck to it, then it wouldn't explode.

Meaning, so long as you either continued using the Runic method or the Aether method, you would be fine. If you swapped between them or deviated, that was when the explosion would come.

That left an elephant in the room. After all, Sylas had also used a purely observational method to detect where there were mines and where there weren't... The thing was that this wasn't accurate at all.

This was the third method that Sylas had found after already seeing through the first two. He originally used the third method to check if the mines were there.

But then he started to check the ones that didn't fit the mold of either Runic or Aether, and that was when he saw that there were actually mines everywhere.

That was to say that there wasn't just two paths to make it to the end...

There were three.

At that point, Sylas only had to ask himself one question.

Why?

Was the Dungeon really just so kind that it had a special method for everyone to use?

No. The answer was in the explosion and the fluctuations.

If you were standing in the right path, on the right square, then a fluctuation would be released that perfectly protected you from the others.

The troublesome part was that it was dependent on where the explosion was starting.

Luckily for Sylas, by the end of it, he had mapped out every single one of the paths and knew exactly where to go the moment an explosion was triggered.

The Golmara under no circumstances even knew what game he was playing.

Sylas had killed the previous saboteurs without a word because the quicker he did it, the less time the others who hadn't been saboteurs yet would have to realize that there was a hidden layer of this game they hadn't even noticed before.

It seemed that it all worked out in his favor.

Sylas walked forward calmly and across the bridge the Golmara had just been standing on. He didn't even feel particularly proud about it, but there was a light smile on his face.

That was fun.

A bit of his previous boredom was ebbed away.

'I'm still coming, Nosphaleen. Just be patient.' Sylas thought to himself, disappearing into the door.

BOOM.

Alpine covered his eyes with a forearm as an explosion erupted around him. A diamond-like coating covered his skin as he shook his head.

He was a bit off in his calculations, but the resulting explosion was only nearing the A-tier and not quite there. He could weather this easily.

When he stepped free, there was little more than carcasses left of his previous teammates.

'Hm?'

A jolt of electricity ran through him just as he was about to take a step on the bridge.

'Another?'

An echo of a message filled Alpine's ears and he gritted his teeth hard.

He looked at his forearm. On it was a familiar silver gauntlet, but upon it were orbs hidden on the underside. Within

it, two Wills floated that shouldn't have been there before.

Both of them were radiating the same thought.

Sylas Grimblade.

Crackling of ice and diamond filled the air around Alpine, his fury moments from boiling over.

Two of them dead after just a single round.

While they weren't their ranked members, if the two of them had worked together, they should have been able to display the strength of number 39 or even 38. For them to be together should have been a boon, not a detriment.

Yet Sylas had dealt with them on his own.

The fact they had died at distinct times meant that Sylas managed to kill at least one of them without the insight of a saboteur as well.

Alpine forced his rage down. He needed a calm and clear mind to deal with this sort of enemy. If he was enraged, Sylas already won.

They had heard the stories of what Sylas had done, but many of them-including himself-believed that the group they had sent was simply too incompetent.

They hadn't nearly sent their best, so it made sense. But Sylas was forcing his opinion to change in real time.

He had no choice but to take this Sylas Grimblade seriously.

Exhaling one final time, Alpine crossed the threshold and the room spun around him.

To his surprise, he came face to face with the exact enemy he had just been grinding his teeth about.

Sylas Grimblade.