Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2084: All

Sylas took deep breaths. It had been a while since he truly pushed himself, but it was even rarer that both his mind and his body were pushed like this at the same time.

During the invasion of The Sanctum, it had only really been his mind that was pushed. During the gathering and reshuffling of The Sanctum's branch sects, it was really only his body that was pushed, the scheming hardly tested him at all.

This time, though, he was trying to balance his body teetering on the edge of collapse with a chess match against a puppet built to defeat even A-tiers.

Its calculative ability, its adaptation, the amount of strength it could pull from was unfathomable to the current Sylas.

Even if it was just A-tiers of the Mortal Realm, it would be too much given the parameters he was restrained to—the restrictiveness of the world against his spatial abilities being the worst factor.

But this Dungeon wasn't a Mortal Dungeon. It was a Demi-God one.

That was what made things even worse for Sylas. Because not only was his Rune Mastery restrained to begin with, but he had to be extra careful not to allow his Demi-God level Will to leak. Otherwise, to say they wouldn't stand a chance of leaving here was a severe understatement.

Another puppet shimmered into existence as Sylas was forcefully voted in again—or maybe this time was just his turn. The difference didn't really matter.

The puppet was already moving before it fully solidified this time. By the time its fist was before Sylas' face, it had flashed into the world.

The weight of space suddenly vanished and Sylas' pupils constricted before quickly dilating.

It was adjusting even faster than before. It could feel how much control Sylas had over the space, so this time it acted before even solidifying, leaving Sylas with only a small fraction of time to influence it.

It was taking advantage of the mechanisms of the world itself.

Sylas crossed his arms in front of him, his toes digging into the ground.

BANG.

'This is a problem.'

One of the last ditch efforts Sylas had planned was to take advantage of the world around him. If the puppet was too focused on him, then it wouldn't assess the world itself and could be tricked that way. More specifically, Sylas had planned to use the stairs themselves.

The Glutton had ripped up the stairs despite them being illusory. That meant that the stairs could be taken advantage of. They definitely had special rules or something of the sort that Sylas felt he could manipulate and trick into falling into his favor.

But the moment the puppet acted like this, Sylas realized that would be a worthless endeavor.

Not only was the puppet improving, but it was doing so faster than he could clearly account for. It wasn't a linear progression, and if the puppet felt that it was losing too much, it would purposely try to expand its scope until it found a chink in Sylas' armor.

Sylas coughed up a mouthful of blood. This time, both his forearms snapped on impact. One of them he had only just healed, only for it not to last all that long at all.

But rather than letting the momentum bring him back, Sylas shifted to a side and then erupted with an uppercut. All of the momentum that should have sent him flying back was transferred through each one of his individual cells, his Will blooming through his body and weathering every rupture.

His muscles snapped his bones back into place once again just before the fist shook the world.

BANG.

The puppet shattered to pieces, sparks of lightning rippling through it until there was nothing left—not even motes of ash.

Sylas stood in place, blood drizzling down his body in thin rains.

Images of the crimson ceiling flashed in his mind and he chuckled, looking down at the ground.

A flare of battle intent burned in Sylas' eyes, his Pride thrumming. His hair danced in the air, drummed up by none other than his own aura alone.

Thick as the mane of a lion, it shook in wild curls and undulated with waves of emerald gold.

Sylas exhaled, his breath so hot it left steam sparking with lightning in the air.

The stairs shook as though responding to something.

Sylas took a step forward and landed on the next step without even a vote. His muscles rippled, an inconspicuous earring on his lobe swaying from side to side.

It seemed that there was only going to be one way out of this. As far as he was concerned, though…

Maybe this would be the far more fun way.

Scales of silver and black began to crawl into existence across Sylas' skin, his hair splitting down the middle in one lane of white and the other of the densest of blacks. Each one radiated its own light, a foggy trail of endlessness following in their wake. It was impossible to tell just where they began and just where they ended.

One of Sylas' eyes glowed in white, the other falling into an abyss of endless darkness. Maybe by coincidence or nature, they were on the opposing side of their similarly colored streak of hair.

A pair of horns grew from his forehead, his body growing almost a foot taller as his body ripped with might.

The wounds on his body began to sizzle, consuming themselves in an endless, looping cycle that broke laws of causality it never should have.

"What is this?" Juxi felt her breath growing heavy. Sylas was right there, she was sure of it, but when she looked to the side, he was right there as well. Every time she shifted her eyes just a little bit, he was there, breaking her understanding of the very world itself.

Sylas reached out with a hand, pulling his scythe from the air as though wrenching it free from the grips of the abyss.

He was going all out from here on.