Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2211: Grade (1)

Sylas fell to a knee, a splitting headache threatening to tear him apart.

He didn't know when it happened, but he had emerged on a mountain, a mountain he actually recognized. It wasn't because it was special, but because it was a mountain of Earth.

He wasn't sure when he had appeared on Earth at all, but what he did notice was that layers upon layers of sand were descending to the ground from above.

Some had already settled below, they fell to the oceans—or what was left of them—drawing them into murky currents. The land became saturated with their heat in some instances and their cold in others.

It was like someone had taken the world of the Efivara, broken it into tiny little pieces, and then sprinkled it across the land as far as the eye could see and as far as the heart could feel.

But the integration… it was horrible.

There was no real cohesion. It felt like the two worlds really had just been rended into pieces and then slapped together as though that was all it took for two worlds to come together.

Something was missing. Sylas knew it was missing. But his head was hurting so much that it was hard to even think properly.

It was like both worlds were screeching in horror, in pain, and he was the only one who could hear them, the only one who could even begin to understand them.

They both took Sylas to be their closest person, the only person they trusted with their lives, and now that they were suffering, they reached out to him, not to force him to experience the same pain, but because it was the only thing they could instinctually do.

It wasn't their fault. They had the mind of children and the maturity of babies. They didn't know that what they were doing was only harming Sylas. But by the same token, it was impossible for Sylas to have realized that something was wrong with as little experience as he had if they didn't react like this.

Sylas' gaze sharpened and his Charisma thrummed. He pushed through the pain, letting out a furious roar until his body exploded in size, a pair of horns growing from his head.

The skies crackled with black lightning, the illusion of a crimson eye appearing high above.

A strong rejection force appeared around Sylas, and in that moment of clarity, he realized a problem.

The only times he had entered this Demonic State was in the past. Back then, the world was literally falling apart, the Real and Demonic Planes were in an all-out war, and the dividing line between human and Demon was meaningless.

But he was no longer back there.

He was the Progenitor of Earth and could, as such, allow whoever he so pleased onto the world. He had even been actively hiding a gate to the Demonic World on Earth for a long while even before then.

But now Earth was in an odd state of fusion with another world. Whatever benefits he had weren't nearly as perfect.

And the Crimson Eye would never allow a Demon to appear in its territory.

Yet, the first contemplated Sylas had wasn't for himself, it was for the Duchess. If he was exposed like this, what about her?

But when Sylas' senses reached out, he could feel that the Crimson Eye was entirely focused on himself.

And the eye hadn't fully formed yet, as though it couldn't quite tell where its target was.

Sylas realized he didn't have much time to work with. The impotent system was truly a bit impotent, but it wasn't stupid to the point of having the wool pulled over its eye indefinitely. It would figure out what was going on here quickly. Meaning… Sylas had half a minute at most to figure out what was going on before it stopped splitting itself between two worlds and two planes and found him.

It was enough.

Sylas didn't even take a split moment to figure all of this out. His mind was working so fast in this form that he didn't even need to put a neat bow on thoughts and actually think them through. Conclusions became like innate intuitions he trusted, his intelligence such that he understood things with little more than a gaze and a thought.

And in a flashing instant, he grasped the dancing lines of Runes that hovered around the world. While he couldn't fully comprehend those that existed beyond the C-tier, he grasped enough leading up to the tier that he could feel what the problem was.

The worlds were trying to fuse, and they had the impetus and intent to do so, but they didn't actually know how to fit into one another.

They couldn't have been more polar opposites.

But to make matters worse, Earth was under a shield layer of protection left behind by the First Race, a formation formed of their oceans lined their planet and formed beautiful Saturn-like rings of sparkling water around them.

This defense wasn't just for show, it was interfering with the senses of the nameless world as well. It didn't have the ability to innately understand what was happening either.

Sylas grasped all the issues and immediately ran into a problem trying to fix them. He could somewhat comprehend Runes at the C-tier, but he only had a full grasp of Runes at the D-tier and lower. There was no way he could guide two worlds to so easily slip into one another like a glove.

But he had something that could.

Sylas pulled out World of Key, but he didn't use its manipulation ability. Instead, he used it as a bridge to understand what he couldn't grasp before.

Information flooded his mind as time ticked down, and as fast as he processed it, it came even faster still afterward.

The Crimson Eye was only growing more corporeal, more real, and then, closer to the 20 second mark than the 30 second mark.

The world shuddered.

The Crimson Eye had fully formed.