Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2241: Corpse

Old Man Tera and Oura stood over Old Man Shah's corpse.

They had been just standing there for a long while. Every part of the sequence was something they had seen. They had watched Shah go from confident, to determined, to serious, to horrified, and then to death.

It was a matter that took several, long grueling hours, but the ending was still the same. They couldn't even start an attempt to help.

The moment Shah started, they had all known that it was too late to go back. The only way forward was either he succeeded or he died.

But there was such a rolling quagmire around Sylas that it detected like he was falling into quicksand and being spun in a whirlpool all at once. Maybe even that wasn't apt enough of a description.

He had been stuck on the horizon of a black hole, unable to extricate himself until he was sucked dry of everything he was.

All that was left of him now was a husk and his robes.

But neither of the two of them knew how to explain this. As untrustful as they were of Shah, forcing him to do this, Shah's family was equally distrustful of them.

For the most powerful Rune Master of their family to just up and die while the two of them were present?

There was no way they could explain this.

Ironically enough, this was certainly Karma biting them.

They hadn't believed Shah when he spoke of what happened, so they forced him to rewind time so that they could see.

And now they wouldn't have any way of describing what happened.

Anyone who tried to scry what happened here would likely end up the same as Shah.

But worst of all, rather than that helping them to prove their point, that would only make things even worse.

What would they think if that happened? Wouldn't they think that the two of them had used special methods to hide what happened so that it couldn't be scried?

How would they even explain that?

Now, they were just standing here in silence, neither willing to say a word as though that would just confirm what was happening here. But the longer they stood here, the more they also realized there was no changing anything.

"This is your fault." Tera said.

"And how do you figure that?" Oura said with a sneer.

"I'm still trying to come up with a reason."

Oura scoffed. "We can only display a united front. If we break, Shah's Clan will make this matter a living hell for us."

"They're in another Heaven, what can they do?" Tera said with a sneer.

"If you believed that, you wouldn't have been staring out at empty space like a gaping idiot this entire time."

For some reason, the two avoided saying Shah's Clan's name. But by the same token, neither mentioned one another's Clan's either. It was like they had a tacit agreement about this.

But what they were exactly hiding from… it was challenging to say.

Was it the system? Or was it the tower?

"A top legacy has been triggered." Oura said slowly.

"Who cares about that? That's one matter, and this is another. Those things aren't helpful at our stage anymore."

"What if it's the Creation of Key?"

"Do you really think we have the time to care about something like that now?"

"No. We do not. Will we send the body back?"

"If they think there is subterfuge, then what difference does it make? Don't you think the treasures on his body are better than any Creation of Key?"

The two men looked toward one another.

"And what will we do when they inevitably start asking questions?"

"Let them. The tower will be our greatest protection now—."

Just as they spoke, Shah's corpse vanished, robes, spatial devices, and all.

It was like the tower had been waiting for them to make a decision before swiping it out from right under their noses.

"What…?"

They stared at the position the corpse had just been in, their eyes wide.

Were they about to take all of the backlash with none of the reward? What the hell was happening here?

"Did Shah… have the Creation of Key on him?" Oura asked slowly.

That seemed like the only reason the tower would do something like this.

"But if that's the case, then why would he go as far as to kill himself trying to rewind time? That makes no sense."

Oura fell into silence. He didn't think it made any sense either. Something definitely wasn't adding up.

It was like… the tower was trying to show… favoritism.

But that favoritism definitely wasn't for Shah who was very obviously dead now. It was for someone else.

However, even this was little more than speculation on their part. There was only one thing they could do now.

The legacy. They had to go and see.

Sylas stood in silence, staring at yet another square that had appeared before him. But this time, it was formed of fragmented, torn glass.

The closer you looked at the shard edges themselves, the more scraps and deviations there were. It was almost like looking at a fractal pattern. It was absolutely endless. The closer you looked, the more patterns there were deeper within.

On the ground before him there was a pile of what looked like sparkling, transparent dust. Those were the shavings from the glass.

The task in this one was "simple". It was to fix the fractures in the mirror by arranging the glass dust to fill in these fractal-like crevices.

The trouble was that after fracturing, the atoms had already rearranged themselves and shifted. The only things that hadn't changed were the dust particles themselves.

You were supposed to examine the shape of the glass dust, reverse engineering where it had likely fallen from, fix the shifted fractals of the glass, and then fit them back into place.

And this time, time was the most important factor.

But Sylas felt like he was just wasting time.