Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2341 Pine

Sylas didn't speak when his gaze met Gogo's across the layers separating the Demi-God and God Planes, and after only a moment, he was the first to look away.

There was nothing more to say between them for now, and his attention instead turned inward as his newly formed eyes seemed to click into place like the rotating gears of some impossibly complex mechanism.

His irises spun in slow layers, emerald Runes swimming beneath their surface while his pupils constricted and dilated on command, each movement more precise than anything his old eyes had ever been capable of.

There was a beautiful sort of synergy to them now, one that followed the arc of his Will so naturally that there was almost no distinction between thought and sight.

The connection between his eyes, his Will, and by extension his Charisma had become so seamless that the world itself felt more responsive, as though everything within his gaze had been placed a fraction closer to the palm of his hand.

His old Runeweaver Eyes had long fallen behind the Rune Master he had become, but now that the weakness of the vessel itself had been removed, there was no reason to leave them there.

His gaze pulsed, and something deep within the layered emerald Runes began to shift.

The Runeweaver Eyes had once been a crutch that allowed him to do things his own Rune Mastery had eventually surpassed, but that didn't mean the foundation itself had become useless. It only meant that it needed to catch up, and now Sylas possessed the eyes, Will, and comprehension necessary to force that evolution himself.

One layer of emerald Runes folded into another while the hidden ring of gold remained steady beneath them, his perception changing with every rotation.

Sylas closed his eyes as the process settled into motion, his thoughts already moving beyond the nebula and toward what came next. Once he finished here, there was only one place left to go, and the Heavens Clash had already been waiting long enough.

It was time to go to the frontier.

But he guessed that if he was going to upgrade his eyes, he might as well finally make use of the legacies his worthless disciple had left behind. He wondered just how many ocular techniques and genes were hidden in their bristles.

**

The gap between Heavens had never been a place meant for ordinary travel.

Void stretched between them in distances that couldn't be measured by normal means, swallowing careless travelers and tearing apart those who underestimated what existed outside the protection of a Heaven's laws.

Normally, even powerful Demi-Gods would think twice before attempting to cross such a region without preparation, but the Heaven System was changing that now, building a bridge through the chaos so that the youths of two Heavens could reach one another and kill.

The bridge wasn't complete yet.

Below the airship, fragmented stretches of stabilized reality cut through the darkness like unfinished roads, portions of them connecting cleanly while others dissolved into unstable currents that twisted around one another.

Warriors had already begun crossing despite the danger, leaping from stable sections into the chaos wherever the bridge failed, trusting their own abilities to carry them through the gaps before the void could swallow them.

Vaelith watched from behind the broad viewing glass of the airship.

By every reasonable measure, she should have been down there already. She was the best C-tier Rune Master of the younger generation, and though her actual strength had entered the B-tier, the restrictions of the Heavens Clash weren't quite as absolute as they appeared.

That was simply the nature of the impotent system.

There were always exceptions, workarounds, and distinctions buried beneath its rules, and Vaelith was able to do this more easily because she fell firmly within what the system considered the younger generation.

Someone older with a steady, matured Will would have found it much harder to slip through the same restriction, but for her, the difference between the words written in the event and the reality they produced was enough.

Even so, she hadn't moved.

The golden slit between her brows remained faintly open as her gaze drifted over the fighting below, yet her thoughts weren't truly on the battlefield. They kept returning to one person, the same man who had overturned the Creation Tower, forced her to reassess her own Rune Mastery, and then vanished...

Sylas Grimblade hadn't appeared.

He should have been eligible for the Heavens Clash as well, and unlike Vaelith, there wasn't even a technicality involved. He had been beneath the Level 200 cap when she last knew of him, which meant there was no obvious reason for his absence.

The door behind her opened.

Vaelith didn't turn.

A man stepped inside with the sort of calm that exuded from his very Will. Pale silver, feathered wings folded against his back, two dark horns swept backward from his temples, and the narrow third-eye slit in the center of his forehead remained closed as he crossed the room with his hands tucked loosely behind him.

Xiburn Elyssadra had possessed the ability to step into the B-tier a long time ago. He simply hadn't.

Among the younger generation of the Thryskai, no one questioned who stood at the peak in direct combat, because Xiburn had already made it so that no one dared to argue. Yet for reasons few understood, he had remained at the edge of the C-tier, seemingly chasing something that mattered more to him than the simple advancement.

That made his presence here even stranger.

Vaelith finally glanced toward him.

"Why are you still here?"

Xiburn smiled as he came to stand a few steps away, his silver wings shifting once before settling against his back.

"How could I possibly leave before seeing the man who has the ice princess pining after him?"

Vaelith's expression didn't change.

She turned her gaze back toward the fractured bridge and the chaos spreading beneath it, where another group of warriors had already thrown themselves into the unfinished path between Heavens.

"I hope you don't regret that choice later."