Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2374: Into Place [Bonus]

[Bonus thanks to TheHonoredOne69 <3]

Nosphaleen still couldn’t slow her heartbeat, no matter how much she tried to force herself back into the same calm she had maintained before Sylas entered the oasis.

He wasn’t saying anything, and somehow that made the silence worse, since he only held her there while his gaze drifted through thoughts she couldn’t begin to read.

Then his eyes flashed with a wild, almost uncontrollable light, and the air around them shuddered as though something invisible had just snapped into alignment.

A prickling sensation spread across Nosphaleen’s skin until it felt as though trillions of tiny needles had pressed against her all at once. They didn’t pierce deeply enough to hurt, yet the sensation reached far beyond anything physical, traveling through skin, flesh, Genes, Will, and into the deeper structures woven through all of them.

Sylas had already understood enough of what was happening that he no longer needed to rip Nosphaleen free from the structure entirely, and that realization had opened a much cleaner path.

The roots of these Seeds were similar to Classes in one important way, in that neither rested cleanly within any single Layer. They interacted with Genes, Will, Potential, and everything stretched between those foundations, which meant severing the Envy Seed outright would likely damage far more than the thing Sylas wanted to remove.

What he needed wasn’t destruction, but a change in direction subtle enough that the structure continued functioning while the narrative imposed upon Nosphaleen quietly lost its hold.

The illusion surrounding her existence had made it seem as though she had always been the Goddess worshipped by the Efivara, stretching her Karma backward and outward until a lie carried the weight of ancient truth.

In reality, Nosphaleen had been separated from Sylas for roughly the same amount of time Sylas himself had experienced, and if anything, Sylas had actually lived through more after traveling into the past to face the Monkey King.

Her advancement had been frighteningly fast, but she was still only C-tier, and that distinction mattered more than the apparent age of the Karma surrounding her.

No matter how complicated the Envy Seed had become or how enormous the structure tied to it appeared, it still had to express itself through Nosphaleen. Her strength remained the ceiling of what could actively exist inside her, just as every Class, bloodline, Profession, and inherited ability eventually had to pass through the limits of the vessel carrying it.

That brought the problem back down to a level Sylas could manipulate, even if the people behind it had tried to bury their influence.

The difficulty was that Sylas didn’t comprehend the Envy Seed well enough to rewrite it directly, and if he tried to perform the same operation on his own Pride Seed, a complete reconstruction would probably still require months of careful study. Whoever had created these Seeds was unquestionably a genius, one who had built something capable of threading through nearly every Layer of existence without collapsing under its own complexity.

Fortunately, Sylas didn’t need to understand the entire structure, nor did he need to replace it. He only needed to redirect it.

The first tool was Reaper Sealwright, which gave him a way to sense the broad meaning contained within the sprouts and roots of the Envy Seed without fully understanding every Rune or Gene that composed them. The second was Nosphaleen’s Spark Seed, something she had developed under Sylas long ago as her Rune Mastery improved, and while her skill was nowhere near his current level, that hardly mattered for what he intended to do.

Which other C-tier could possibly be on his level of Rune Mastery to begin with?

This wasn’t meant to become a permanent solution, only a stopgap that would give Nosphaleen enough freedom to step away from the path someone else had chosen for her.

Sylas had already deviated from the ordinary direction of his own Pride Seed, which was why its influence had never closed around him as tightly as it might have, though even he would have eventually ended up trapped inside the same framework if he hadn’t noticed what was happening soon enough.

Nosphaleen needed the same opportunity.

He didn’t need to remove the Envy Seed from her body, nor did he need to erase the Karma forcing it along its current path. He only needed to make the Seed begin listening to Nosphaleen herself instead of the vast reservoir of Envy being pressed into her from countless outside Wills, and once that shift began, the entire structure would start moving along a different trajectory on its own.

By the time anyone noticed, Sylas intended to already have a permanent answer.

His eyes brightened as the Death Seal unfolded through his perception, not attacking the Envy Seed, but reading the general meaning carried through its branching sprouts.

He followed those pathways until they intersected with the structures of Nosphaleen’s Spark Seed, searching for points where their functions overlapped closely enough that one could be attached to the other without causing the rest to reject the change.

There were thousands of possibilities, most of them useless.

Sylas ignored those immediately.

His current speed of thought allowed him to sift through the structure without hesitation, stripping away incompatible routes until only a handful remained. The best connection wasn’t the strongest one, nor the cleanest, but the one subtle enough to resemble something Nosphaleen’s own growth might have naturally produced if given enough time.

That was exactly what Sylas needed.

His Will moved.

The Death Seal guided his perception through the Envy Seed while his Runeweaver Eyes mapped the connection points, and then Sylas used Nosphaleen’s Spark Seed as the bridge between them.

One sprout shifted, another followed, and a thread of Envy that had once reached outward toward the Will of countless others bent inward instead.

The change was almost laughably small compared to the structure surrounding it, but that was the point.

Sylas didn’t want the people controlling Nosphaleen to feel something snap, and he didn’t need some grand transformation that would announce to the universe that their influence had been broken.

He only needed the first branch to turn, followed by another, and then another after that until the Envy Seed gradually stopped drawing its definition from the outside world and began taking it from Nosphaleen herself.

The moment that happened, the entire direction of its growth would change.

CHI.

Something slotted into place deep within Nosphaleen.

Her body jerked in Sylas’ arms as a gasp escaped her lips, and goosebumps raced across her skin while the first redirected thread of Envy quietly settled into its new path.