Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2422 The Rarity of Telekinetic Martial Arts

Sylas continued forward without slowing, and the first group of rat humanoids that tried to block him died before Fanelei could finish looking over the remains of the last. A ring of emerald Runes opened across the path, several gear-like formations rotating through one another before the strength of an incoming spear was mismatched against the defense of the rat beside it, sending the weapon clean through its chest.

Fanelei watched the corpse collapse, then looked back at Sylas with an expression that had grown increasingly difficult to hide. "What did you actually do to them?"

"Will Priming."

Her eyes immediately lit up.

Of all the answers Sylas could have given, somehow the fact it was something so familiar made it more interesting rather than less. Fanelei had used Will Priming for longer than Sylas had been alive, yet she had just watched him apply it in a way she wouldn't have even thought to attempt.

Another rat dropped from above with a pair of hooked blades, but Sylas only shifted two fingers as he walked. A layered glyph formed over its head, the surrounding space warped, and the creature suddenly read the pressure waiting for it as almost nonexistent before a compressed spatial blade tore through its skull.

"How are you hiding that much from them?" Fanelei stepped around the body without looking down. "Priming can change an environment, but you're making their Wills read the wrong information entirely."

"Their Wills are touching the world first. I'm changing what they sense."

Fanelei thought about that for a moment, then her gaze shifted toward another cluster gathering farther ahead. "Is that why they're so susceptible? Something related to Greed?"

"Not particularly." Sylas swept a hand forward and a dozen Runes spread out like interlocking teeth, each one catching onto a different section of the incoming formation. "It's a defense mechanism. The main point is to hide from the system by blending in. Greed probably changes how it's expressed, but the foundation should be broader than that."

The rats charged anyway, their Wills flooding outward before their bodies accelerated, and Sylas watched every strand of that interaction with interest. Something had pushed Hell into greater chaos than it should have been, and these creatures had been distorted along with it, but that didn't make the method they were using any less impressive.

If anything, the opposite was true.

"The reason they can respond so quickly isn't that their Will is weak," Sylas continued. "It's incredibly powerful, and their Telekinetic Martial Arts is better than mine."

Fanelei's brows rose just as two rats reached Sylas from opposite sides, one thrusting a spear while the other brought down a heavy cleaver. Sylas twisted the space between them, shifted the interpretation of their attacks by a fraction, and the spear entered beneath the second rat's arm while the cleaver came down through the first one's neck.

"They're better than you at it?"

"In this application."

Sylas watched another rat force its body to change before an attack had even properly reached it, muscles tightening, Aether shifting, Will sinking down through flesh and bone in a single seamless response. Forcing your own body to obey your Will was already difficult enough, but these creatures were forcing themselves to react to someone else's Will almost instantly.

"The applications seem narrow at first," Sylas continued, stepping through another collapsing formation as black blood spread across the obsidian. "The simplest would be copying a Skill the moment you saw it, assuming your body and Aether could recreate the necessary structure."

Fanelei's attention sharpened even more, while Cheri followed a few steps behind them in complete silence.

"But that would only be the shallowest use." Sylas' eyes flashed as another group appeared across the ridge ahead. "You don't have to copy the technique itself, you could peg your body's output to the Will of the person using it."

If an opponent leaked even a fraction of their intent into the world, whether through poor control or simply the natural process of attacking, Telekinetic Martial Arts might be able to use that signal as a reference. Your body could then raise its own output in direct response, not in every direction like the rats were doing now, but only where and when you needed it.

The possibility sounded strangely familiar, though...

Sylas' gaze narrowed while a vortex opened beneath three approaching rats, dragging one halfway into collapsed space before snapping shut and leaving its lower body behind. What if Tomoe wasn't simply strong in the ordinary sense, but had learned how to tether portions of her strength to the Will of whoever stood before her?

That would explain more than a few things.

The obvious limitation was the body itself. A weak vessel couldn't keep raising its output forever without tearing apart, no matter how perfect the Will controlling it was.

But what if every stat was Willborn?

Sylas' thoughts immediately shifted.

A Willborn stat wasn't bound by the same rigidity as a normal one, and if all seven Core Stats reached that state, things like stat limits and Gene limits would lose most of their meaning. His body wouldn't be locked into one set level of output, it would become something far more flexible, capable of shifting alongside his Will rather than dragging behind it.

Then there was the most important part.

Even against many enemies far above his Tier, his Will Grade was still superior, and if he learned how to tie his physical output to the Will leaking from those opponents while maintaining his own higher Grade as the controlling foundation...

Just how far could that push him?

Cheri's heart was beating hard enough that she was almost annoyed by the sound of it.

She had heard of Telekinetic Martial Arts before, of course. It was one of the most cherished inheritances within Legacy, something people spent entire lives trying to qualify for, yet Sylas spoke about it like he had simply stumbled into the concept and crafted it on his own.

Then there were the rats.

Cheri watched another half-dozen die under a spiral of spatial Runes, two of them cutting one another apart after Sylas changed their readings, while the others were pulled into separate black vortices. If Telekinetic Martial Arts was really that rare, why was an endless swarm of rats using it?

She didn't have an answer, and Sylas didn't seem interested in giving one without being asked.

They continued forward for what felt like an impossible distance, yet Hell made distance difficult to judge in the first place. More rats appeared, more formations bloomed, and Sylas continued explaining pieces of what he was seeing to Fanelei while killing them without ever truly breaking his stride.

Then the horizon changed.

At first, Cheri thought the dark shapes ahead were mountains, but the longer they moved, the more impossible that became. Two enormous doors rose in the distance, so large that even though Sylas judged them to still be galaxy-lengths away, they dominated the horizon as though they stood directly in front of him.

He was certain Scurrying Madness was behind them.

Sylas took another step, only for movement to appear between him and the doors, first in scattered clusters and then in numbers that rapidly multiplied. These weren't rat humanoids, though, and as their twisted bodies emerged from the darkness, Fanelei's expression changed.

Broken armor hung from their bodies, Madness twisted their eyes, and their Wills carried the same fractured instability Fanelei herself had once carried when Hell nearly consumed her.