Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2243: The Simple [Bonus]

[Bonus chapters thanks to Eeshoo and BobTheEngineer <3]

A male Thryskai had appeared in front of Sylas, his eyes a stormy cold. A bit of the aura of a B-tier radiated from him, but everyone knew it was worthless here. The only thing that mattered here was how strong your Rune Mastery was and nothing else.

But even if Sylas was a D-tier Rune Creator much like this man was…

Kaeloth was also a C-tier Spark Master.

And he just so happened to be the third ranked C-tier Rune Master of their generation.

His Will rippled out in blue waves as he faced off against Sylas, a deathly intent spilling out from him.

"Who is Elara Grimblade to you?"

Vaelith was still trying to recover down below when this happened. She didn't expect Kaeloth to step out, and she half mused it was an ego thing. But when she heard the question, she realized that unlike herself, Kaeloth recognized the Grimblade name.

How was that possible? There was no way she would miss such a powerful Clan from the Skai Heaven.

What she expected even less was Sylas' shift in aura the moment the words were spoken.

BOOM.

Kaeloth went flying, a palm of emerald green slapping down at him with a force that sent the skies rippling. A violent current surged until he was slapped down into the earth below, pinned beneath the heavy fist.

Sylas' Pride Seed churned and it felt like his Will and Charisma had become entirely untouchable.

The palm condensed until it was nearly a real hand, the amount of Will flooding into it so great Kaeloth found it difficult to even summon his own. The world around him was formed of so much Sylas that he couldn't find the space to cast Runes even if he wanted to.

It was just like their Rune Duel all over again.

Sylas stood in the skies, his hair dancing with fury.

He didn't even know why Kaeloth was asking the question, but his sensitivity toward Will was unmatched by most. He could tell when someone was hostile, and all he needed to know was that Kaeloth was exactly that.

"If even a single hair on her head is harmed…"

The skies crackled with lightning when Sylas began to speak, a raging torrent peeling across it. The clouds were rended to pieces, and even the tower itself began to shift faster and faster, its gears and churning mechanisms overlapping on one another as though time itself was beginning to speed up.

Sylas didn't finish the words, and yet it felt like the world was finishing it for him.

The heavy air of destruction, the violent churn of Will, the way the Runes in the skies reacted as though they would happily, or maybe with fury, turn to any form Sylas wished of them.

There was simply no misunderstanding what he was saying.

The world was breathing out the words for him.

Chi.

A line of pink suddenly cut across the skies.

BANG.

It was too fast, colliding with Sylas' chest before he could react. His body shot back, but not before his hand clamped onto a wrist.

Sylas didn't care about anything else right now. The moment his little sister was mentioned, he saw little more than red.

He should have been protecting her, she should have been under his wing. And yet she had slipped through a crack in a world that he supposedly controlled, a world he should have been the Progenitor of, only to end up in a place where she was surrounded by enemies.

She had not a single ally on her side, and who knew how much hardship she had suffered.

It was one thing to think about it in the abstract, but it was a completely different matter for a member of one of the more powerful families on the Demi-God Plane to ask about her by name.

That snapped something inside of Sylas. Frustration that had been smoldering ever since Vaelith started wasting his time completely began to foam and bubble at the edges.

For the first time in a very long time, Sylas activated not just one, but both of his Progenitor Flame Abilities.

And not only did he do so, he put a completely new level of insight to bear.

Runes raged into being around him, and all of a sudden, from a fierce momentum backward, Sylas slowly came to a stop, and then a sudden screeching halt.

He stood in the skies, an arm half buried in his gut. Blood leaked from his wound, and yet one would have thought he couldn't feel it at all.

His gaze blazed as not D-tier… but C-tier Runes appeared.

—

[Temporal Delay (Legendary) (Progenitor Flame Ability)]

[Bend your perception of time, and the perception of the Mesh around you. See, but also predict lags, their fractures, their changing oscillations. Read the rhythm between seconds, embed your Will only to the temporal tide] —

[Astral Stutter (Legendary) (Progenitor Flame Ability)]

[Feel the evolution of Runes—what they were, what they are, and what they may have yet to become. Grasp the Astral Echoes, feeling their intention, enabling correction and transformation even while they were being born. Your Runes no longer just form, they adapt] —

Because of these people, he simply hadn't had the chance to complete the final steps of his Rune Mastery journey. He felt that he was so close, but everyone just kept wasting his time over and over and over again.

So he forewent his own comprehension entirely, using tidbits of it to apply it in a completely separate and new way instead.

He had asked himself the question so many times in the last several hours, and here it still lay… unanswered… If shapes and fire alone could grow into something so complex… then what could space and time do?

The problem with the question, he realized, was that he was skipping too many steps.

Rather than trying to race to the final answer, he should be taking step one first…

Magnifying the simple into the complex, the horseshoe, the closeness of death to life when it reached its own extremes… Before Sylas could even touch any of that, he first had to simplify his own path.

While those who started with simple paths only had to grow to the complex.

He had to simplify first before he could then build it back up.

In that case, he would strip it all down to its barest bones, peeling everything back until he was using abilities that didn't even originate from himself, but instead from a world that already interacted with space and time as though it was no different from any other law… a world that granted him the abilities of space and time in their simplest forms.

What was simpler than an ability that worked with hardly any input from yourself?

In that moment, as though Sylas had been replaced with a version of himself displaced through both space and time, he was no longer a D-tier Rune Creator.

The air shook, and in that moment, a glimpse of a man who did not yet exist surfaced before them by ironically focusing on nothing but the simple around him.

Sylas became a C-tier Rune Creator.

He ripped the arm in him out and punched.