Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2317: Weak

That was all Iskaleth needed to say.

Sylas' thoughts collapsed inward so quickly that the answer flashed into existence. The pieces had already been there, scattered between everything he had learned about Dead Will. The persistence of myths, the strange border between Will and Karma, and the way belief could continue accumulating long after the origin of something had vanished.

The instant Iskaleth called Fate Dragons an attempt to forge true Dragons, those pieces slammed together.

"Karma."

Iskaleth's eyes widened.

Her heart trembled hard enough that Sylas could feel the change in her Will without even trying. She had been certain he had never heard of this concept before, and she had every reason to be.

She could see his Fate. More accurately, Sylas was allowing her to see enough of it that the distinction hardly mattered. He hadn't suppressed everything around himself because he was still weighing whether she was worth taking as a Contract, and Iskaleth had understood that much. It was why she had dared to speak so freely in the first place. He was interested, but she hadn't shown him enough yet.

What she misunderstood was what Sylas was measuring.

Her talent didn't matter much to him. No matter how talented she was, she would never be more talented than him. Her intelligence mattered even less. No matter how smart she was, she could never be smarter than he was.

What he wanted was Will. A Backbone and True Pride. Something he couldn't simply reconstruct himself, the only thing he couldn't reconstruct himself.

That was the one thing Sylas still couldn't manufacture, and Iskaleth had yet to realize that this was the only test that truly mattered. All she could do was stare at him, caught between confusion and awe. She had barely explained, but to Sylas the difference didn't matter.

"You have access to one of these Fate Dragons?" Sylas asked calmly. Then his gaze sharpened slightly. "Or, rather, one of the attempts."

Iskaleth swallowed.

"I…" She stopped, took a breath, then forced herself to settle. "I was born in the eye of one by accident. It leaked from a former world, and my birth happened to align with that leakage almost perfectly. I was born blind because of it, but the same event changed my eyes completely."

Sylas listened without interrupting.

"I can sense where it is," she continued. "Not precisely in the same way I see Fate, but there has always been a connection between us. I planned to take it for myself one day when I became strong enough."

Her voice steadied as she spoke, the explanation flowing faster now.

"The last time the World Serpent triggered a Quicktime Event, I tried to forge the Gluttony Seed for exactly that reason. I needed a better method of devouring before I could even attempt to digest the Fate Dragon. Its Karma is too dense. Its Will is too deeply tied to too many things at once. If I tried with my current methods, it would consume me long before I consumed it."

Sylas' gaze remained indifferent.

"But…" Iskaleth's tongue flickered once between her lips. "If it saves my life, you can have it."

Sylas said nothing.

He had already understood most of the structure the moment she confirmed his first guess.

Dragons weren't real.

They were constructs of Dead Will, myths repeated across countless Races and civilizations until the concept itself became heavy enough to affect reality. A Dragon wasn't merely powerful. It represented the pinnacle of power. That distinction mattered because myths had no flesh to limit them, no living Will to contradict what others believed they should be.

If an actual Dragon existed and proved weaker than expected, the myth would collapse.

But if no Dragon existed at all, then every story could continue adding to the ceiling forever. The Dragon would always be stronger, always be larger, purer in whatever sense matter, impossible to understand in every way you might want to understand them.

And if every civilization across time and space carried some version of that same understanding, then the combined weight behind the concept would become absurd.

Karma.

That was the bridge.

If Will represented what a being imposed upon the world while alive, and Dead Will was what remained after that living interpretation vanished, then Karma was the network connecting all of those impressions together. Every story told about Dragons, every fear, every aspiration, every warrior who swore they would one day surpass one, every Serpentes that evolved while chasing the image of that impossible summit...

All of it fed the same concept. And ironically enough, the more powerful every one of them became in their own individual stories, the stronger the legend of the Dragon would grow.

So, the question was... how did someone create a real Dragon?

Sylas' eyes narrowed.

You couldn't simply breed something powerful enough.

Power alone wouldn't be sufficient because the creature would still stand beneath the myth. The moment everyone looked at it and thought: "that isn't quite what a Dragon should be", it had already failed. Unless someone grew strong enough that their Will could trump every Will to ever exist before them, it was impossible.

There was only one path: you had to create something whose Karma could match the myth itself.

Something capable of making enough of reality accept that it belonged at the same height as an idea built across countless generations. That was what a Fate Dragon was. It was an attempt to condense Karma until it was an embodiment of Living Will that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the quintessence of thought that had created Dragons in the first place.

The ambition was obscene.

If a Clan, Sect, or organization succeeded, they wouldn't just gain an obscenely powerful beast. They would create a new ceiling, one tied to themselves, one the rest of the universe would begin chasing instead.

And unlike the Serpentes trapped beneath the myth of Dragons, they themselves would stand above the old limitation.

Sylas' gaze deepened.

That was worth taking.

More importantly, it was worth understanding.

"If you can get your hands on this incomplete Fate Dragon," Iskaleth spoke softly, sensing enough of his interest to press forward, "your eyes will become far better than mine."

Sylas looked at her.

She felt the shift immediately. For a moment, Iskaleth seemed to believe she had finally said enough.

Then Sylas spoke.

"Your Will is weak."

The blood drained from her face.