Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2196: Commanded

Sylas had actually wanted to "keep" Thessa. But the method with which he "killed" the Duchess and the Prince required a thorough, complete, and perfect understanding of their bodies and bloodline. That wasn't something he had had the time or stamina to do with Thessa. So… He directly killed her.

However, the irony of that was that Sylas had killed her precisely because he didn't understand how her bloodline worked, so it wasn't exactly impossible for her to have pulled the wool over his eyes in some way, especially since he had been more worried about the coming challenge from Kairos and the Monkey King.

It didn't take long for Sylas to realize why it was that Thessa might keep the Duchess alive.

The idea of the Duchess hating him was very much a good chance, but even if that didn't work out… how would this land at Nosphaleen's doorstep?

Not long after he ultimately rejected her in favor of Cassarae, he not only took in another woman, but she was even pregnant with his child?

If Nosphaleen was blazing through the path of Envy right now, how much more furious would something like this make her? It wasn't something that was difficult to understand at all.

There were only really two paths forward. Either the Duchess hated his guts—and that could end in a range of things between either trying to kill him or simply leaving after he freed her. Or, the Duchess would choose to listen to his explanation and stay.

Either way, Thessa would achieve her goal and stoke the flames in Nosphaleen's heart all the more.

The last time Sylas had sensed Nosphaleen, he could very clearly feel her love for him still there. It had an edge of something else to it, but that love was very much there.

However… the more that was prickled and prodded at…

They said that love and hate were two sides of the very same coin.

It seemed that Thessa realized that while Nosphaleen had become the specimen she wanted, if she wanted to use Nosphaleen against him, simply having her experience Envy wasn't enough—especially since it was the Virtue of Envy, albeit a twisted form.

She needed that love to become hatred, and Sylas only seemed to be helping her.

The only question that remained was…

How did Sylas know it was Thessa who had done all of this?

Sylas held the chains in his hands, running his thumb over them.

If he was correct, Thessa hadn't trapped the Duchess here by overwhelming her with power. There were some very complex time manipulations going on here.

Thessa had used echoes of other timelines to twist the path of the Duchess.

Right now, time was separated into two streams. One of them branched off into the closed loop that Sylas had crafted, and the other was the one the Monkey King had crafted.

In the latter timeline, the Monkey King was the creator of the Golden Battlefield, the Golden Race, and the reason all of this happened.

In the former timeline, the closed loop that Sylas had created, the Golden Battlefield and its creation was still triggered through the Split Realm, but the trapped Demons weren't nearly as powerful.

Because the Monkey King wasn't here to see things through, they were able to eventually escape the Split Realm.

Thus, the only reason the Duchess could be here in Sylas' estimation was that she had chosen to be here because she knew he would be here.

However, when he got down here, he realized that she was bound and chained here, seemingly by force. That suggested that if the Duchess had had the freedom… she likely wouldn't be here at all.

Thessa had forced this interaction by borrowing from a timeline that didn't exist.

How had she done it? Sylas didn't know. Her understanding of time was impossibly far beyond his own right now.

But what made even less sense to Sylas was that Thessa was part of the very same Thryskai Clan that he had used the system to destroy, was she not?

On the one hand, it made sense now why that clan would take the risk to target Earth despite being Demi-Gods. She hated Sylas.

However, if she could see timelines, shouldn't she know how that would end? Unless there was a limit to how much she could borrow from other timelines?

But more importantly than all of that, how had she survived the system's purge in the first place?

There were too many questions that Sylas didn't have the answers to. Far too many.

Questions that simply didn't need to be answered right now. It didn't matter.

He would crush her the same way he crushed the Monkey King. If he could wipe out someone who had defeated Gods, what made her think that her ending wouldn't be the same?

Just because she had a few billions of years to plan it all out?

So had the Monkey King. In fact, he had created an entire Race just to deal with Sylas.

But now that Race was about to become Sylas' personal fighting force and the Monkey King would be nowhere to be seen or heard from ever again.

Her ending would be the same.

Sylas' thumb stopped rubbing across the chains and he looked up to meet the Duchess' gaze.

Even now, he didn't know this woman's True Name, but he didn't plan on asking, not now. One day, she would tell him all on her own.

Until then, she had one job.

And that was to nurture the child in her belly. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sylas shook the chains.

The Golden Battlefield in the last timeline was designed to trap him.

The Golden Battlefield in this timeline was crafted by him.

The Golden Battlefield in the last timeline was designed to kill him.

The Golden Battlefield in this timeline was crafted to be commanded by him.

There were no chains of time here that could restrict him.

Chi.

The chains shattered to pieces.