Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2298: Death from Granted Life

Sylas looked down at Sarethvane.

There wasn't much left to look at. Sarethvane lay sprawled across the wreckage of his own coffins, the stone split and scattered around him, black Will bleeding off his frame in threads that ended in shattered edges. The irony was that his injuries weren't even caused by Sylas. Sylas hadn't landed a single hit. If anything, Sylas had saved him in the end.

It was Sarethvane's own arrogance that caused him to compress his body like he had.

But even so, Sylas didn't move to claim him either.

There was a difference between a Serpentes who had been beaten and a Serpentes who had been broken, and the second one was worth nothing to him at all.

He was looking for a method to break free of the system, to shatter the ceiling. He didn't need contracts who were vacant shells of their former selves after a loss.

He had built Gogo back up once. It had taken time and it had taken patience, and even then, it had only worked because Gogo was a Basilisk King. That lineage towered over anything a grave-crawling Serpentes could dream of claiming.

A Bloodline like that had a floor. No matter how far Gogo fell, there was always something waiting to catch him, something older than his own confidence.

Plus… at the time Sylas didn't exactly have any other choice but to take Gogo on. Gogo was his first contract and everything Sylas did at the time relied on the system. He hadn't known any other way.

Gogo had grown into the role of his little brother, but Sarethvane was nothing to him now. Why should he give him the same treatment?

Sarethvane's baseline talent was unremarkable. His race wasn't anything worth mentioning, honestly. If you stripped away the Will he had stolen from the dead, the cleverness that taught him how to hold it, and the drive that allowed him to trudge forward to this point, what remained wouldn't be able to look any decent Demi-God in the Eye.

There was a reason his Race or Clan wasn't that of an Overlord Race.

So Sylas stood in the dark above the ruined cemetery, his hands in his pockets, simply observing.

…

Sarethvane looked up.

His body wasn't the problem. His chest was cracked, his mouth was full of blood, and none of his bones were in the right place, but they could heal. Flesh could come back together, bone could mend, his mind, however….

He reached inward, trying to find some strength, not because he truly wanted to fight back, but out of mere habit. He didn't know any other way to live life.

His strength didn't answer him the way it always had. The Wills came back fragmented and broken, they didn't respond to him in the same way. In fact, they seemed to treat him as one of their own, a broken piece of what once was… a dead Will.

His strength sat there in pieces and no matter how many times he scooped at it, trying to pick it up, it failed horribly every time.

That was when a voice echoed in his mind.

Sarethvane couldn't tell where it came from. It was simply there and everywhere at once. It surfaced inside his skull like it had always been there, and maybe it had been… ever since he saw that notification… or maybe ever since the very first Quicktime Event that God had triggered… "Weak."

Sarethvane's eyes went still.

"You crawled through graves for scraps and claimed it as a path, you claimed to have embraced death but can't cobble together your own broken soul. He has yet to even draw on any true or real strength, and yet this is the state you are in."

The pressure of it settled over Sarethvane's fractured Will, and the strange thing was that it didn't hurt. It felt like being lifted. It felt like a hand sliding beneath a body that had long grown cold on a stone slab.

"But I am here, and I am generous." The voice echoed once more.

Below him, the coffins rattled.

"Open your mind, boy… and I will do the rest. I will stand up in your place, and I will crush what lies before you, and the whole Sector will see the gap between a True God and the fool standing in the skies now."

The offer was wrapped in a neat, tidy little bow and handed to him on a silver platter. All he had to do was give in, to break what feeble remainder of his thoughts and mind there was… And he would have his revenge.

Sarethvane's lips began to part, and something deep inside him refused. It was deep and buried, instinctual in the same way he might reflexively react in battle. It was him, his very being itself, the kernel that made him Sarethvane.

It wasn't pride or courage, and it certainly wasn't any desire to spare Sylas Grimblade. It was older than any of that, and it came with a memory he had not gone looking for, the first memories he could recall, the first instances of when he stopped being a fleshly, frail body at the whims of nature, and truly became his own person… Memories of his mother.

She had been the gentlest creature he had ever known. In a clan of beasts that always measured by strength and might, she had never once raised her voice, never once put her weight on anyone smaller than herself.

She never complained.

Not once.

And then one morning she was dead, and Sarethvane had stood over her body in complete, stupid shock, because he hadn't known.

He hadn't known she was ill.

He only learned it afterward in the way he learned everything… from the connections she left behind… from the Will that lingered where she ceased to be...

Sarethvane's lips began to part, and something deep inside him refused. It was deep and buried, instinctual in the same way he might reflexively react in battle. It was him, his very being itself, the kernel that made him Sarethvane.

It wasn't pride or courage, and it certainly wasn't any desire to spare Sylas Grimblade. It was older than any of that, and it came with a memory he had not gone looking for, the first memories he could recall, the first instances of when he stopped being a fleshly, frail body at the whims of nature, and truly became his own person… Memories of his mother.

She had been the gentlest creature he had ever known. In a clan of beasts that always measured by strength and might, she had never once raised her voice, never once put her weight on anyone smaller than herself.

She never complained.

Not once.

And then one morning she was dead, and Sarethvane had stood over her body in complete, stupid shock, because he hadn't known.

He hadn't known she was ill.

He only learned it afterward in the way he learned everything… from the connections she left behind… from the Will that lingered where she ceased to be...

The first person he had read through their grave was the very same mother who had granted him life.