Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2092: Not a Single [Bonus]

[Bonus thanks to BobtheEngineer <3]

Sylas shot forward, his body forming streams of darkness in his wake. He took a quick glance up as though he had sensed something, but his expression hardly gave anything away.

He appeared before the enormous Zeus Puppet in an instant, his body rapidly expanding to meet its size, activating [Boundary of Worlds] to freely control himself.

BANG.

They crashed against one another.

The puppet went flying, its body reacting as though an entire moon had crashed right into it.

The tortoise froze in the air. 'That is imposs—.'

The puppet recovered quicker than the tortoise could even finish its thoughts. It spun, landing on the ground lightly as though it weighed little more than a feather despite its size.

BANG.

The ground shook as it shot forward, compressing and yet not shattering. Its throwing daggers slipped down between its fingers, but then they started to fuse into one, fusing until they were a pair of heavy sabers.

Sylas met them with a calm block, his body twisting and shifting to deflect the direct pulses of power.

His Will surged out of him in waves, his Madness fueling its endless power.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

They danced, exchanging one blow after another as they weaved through space and time.

The cracks in space were the biggest mistake that the tortoise could have made, maybe even beyond allowing him to use Demi-God aura.

The moment Sylas regained his control over spacetime, his combat prowess exploded. One couldn't even tell the Zeus Puppet was adapting at all, it felt like they were locked in a battle more even than the world had ever seen.

But in reality Sylas and the Zeus Puppet both were adapting, changing and shifting faster than most could even keep up with.

There were three mistakes that the tortoise had made. Three mistakes that would cost it its life.

First, it had allowed Sylas to use Demi-God Aura.

Second, it had inevitably weakened the restraint the space of an A-tier Demi-God Dungeon had had on Sylas, freeing him up not only to manipulate it, but to access the true power of his Rune Mastery as well.

And last…

Its actions had forced it to cap the Zeus Puppet at the C-tier. Sylas no longer had to worry about its power suddenly spiking up to the A-tier in order to adapt to him.

It was said that Zeus Puppets could fight two levels above themselves… but that wasn't a measure of raw strength, it was a measure of skill.

So long as raw power was capped at a certain level…

Sylas didn't believe a single thing in existence could adapt to skill better than he could.

And certainly not a bucket of bolts.

Chi.

Sylas slipped a slash and punched at the Zeus Puppet's gut. It didn't block, slashing down instead to take his head.

Sylas' telekinetic martial arts thrummed and all his momentum abruptly stopped as though he had been trying to throw a feint from the very beginning.

His body slid back, his forward momentum reversing under a fluctuation of his Rune Mastery and a twist of reality.

His other hand still held his scythe that had expanded to match his new size, hooking it around the back of the puppet's ankles and yanking back as he slid.

The puppet leapt up seamlessly to dodge, slashing down with both of its heavy sabers.

Sylas pulled his scythe up and back. His grip on its polearm loosened, allowing its body to slide up his hand. Then he pressed a palm against the flat of its curved blade, blocking the strike.

At least that was what it seemed like. In reality, Sylas glided the twin sabers of the puppet down its curve and then leapt up into the air.

He and the puppet spun in relation to one another and all of a sudden the puppet was beneath Sylas and he was above it.

BANG.

Sylas' blade pressed into the ground. He held onto his polearm, leaning his entire body on it and pinning the puppet's sabers to the ground as he lifted his legs high into the air.

Then he suddenly descended with a stomp of his foot from above right toward the back of the puppet's head.

Space twisted around his heel, time slowing and then suddenly accelerating as though to pull both from the future and past to strengthen himself.

Reality split around his intent. The world wasn't ready to withstand his might.

He forced it to.

The puppet tried to pull its sabers back. Its calculations told it that it would lose if it lost its weapons. It poured in more power to yank them free, unfortunately… it hit a ceiling.

The tortoise had restrained it to the C-tier and Sylas was now weighing himself in measurements of space and time… And all of his momentum was aimed downward.

BOOM.

Sylas' blow landed and the world went white as though two stars collided.

**

They watched the battle in silence. There was something about every moment that gripped their hearts. It felt like Sylas' bony hands had reached into their chests and taken a hold, squeezing down slowly as though a frog boiling in a pot of water.

Slow and steady until there was no escaping it.

The scenery went completely white, and at that moment, even Rhykan had stopped licking at his lollipop, his eyes narrowing into narrow little slits. His third eye fluttered open for just the briefest of instants before it closed.

In the bright flash, hardly anyone noticed. But Four did.

She looked over for a moment before her eyes returned to the scene before her, her eyes narrowing as well.

Every one of them had stopped speaking when they recognized the Zeus Puppet. With enough adaptation, at the C-tier, that puppet could have put the entire Mortal Realm at risk.

Not a single one of them imagined that there existed anyone that could fight it head to head like that.

Not a single one of them imagined a person could ever push a Zeus Puppet to this point.

The white began to slowly fade.