Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2423 Stalling

The first thing Sylas noticed was that Scurrying Madness really didn't want him reaching those doors, but the intent behind the resistance had changed since the first wave of rat humanoids.

At first, it had felt like simple targeting, an enemy noticing where he wanted to go and putting obstacles in his way, but now there was something closer to stalling mixed into the Will pressing against him.

What Sylas couldn't understand was why he didn't sense any fear from it. Stalling was usually a symptom of fear in some form, whether someone needed more time to prepare, wanted to delay an inevitable outcome, or hoped something else would happen first, so what reason did Scurrying Madness have to stall him while feeling none of those things?

Maybe it simply wanted to make Sylas' life more difficult, but even that explanation didn't solve anything. Making his life more difficult still had to serve some purpose, which meant there was something Scurrying Madness was waiting for, and by now it should have realized that throwing more bodies at Sylas wouldn't accomplish much.

Infinite Will had already been difficult to exhaust without applying an extraordinary amount of pressure, while Eternal Will had pushed that advantage several steps further. Sylas could feel his Will recovering faster than these small exchanges consumed it, so even if Scurrying Madness filled the entire region with enemies, this sort of attrition would eventually become meaningless.

That realization made Sylas more interested in seeing how far it was willing to go. "We're speeding up, Fanelei, make sure she keeps up."

Fanelei barely had time to grab Cheri before Sylas took another step, space bending around him as he shot forward across the black terrain. Lava rivers and obsidian ridges blurred beneath them while the enormous doors remained impossibly distant, yet the first new wave of enemies appeared almost immediately.

They were nothing like the rat humanoids from before.

Some still wore fragments of armor, while others carried weapons so old and damaged that it looked like holding them had become more habit than conscious choice. Their eyes glowed red with Madness and Greed, their bodies twisted under an influence that had eaten away at them for so long that almost nothing of their former selves remained.

Fanelei recognized what they were immediately, and Sylas had already reached the same conclusion from what Slithering Madness told him the last time he came here. These were failed Madness Candidates, people who had failed to become True Disciples and were dragged into Hell, where the constant erosion of Madness slowly destroyed what little chance they had of ever escaping.

Scurrying Madness' reasoning became obvious once the first few attacked.

These people were much weaker than the rat humanoids, their Telekinetic Martial Arts several levels worse and their Wills nowhere near as refined, but that actually made Sylas' previous method less effective. Will Priming worked best against something sensitive enough to read the false information he placed into the world, while these failed Candidates had been reduced too far to notice most of those subtleties at all.

Scurrying Madness had realized that his strongest warriors were giving Sylas too much information to manipulate, so he had replaced precision with chaos. Sylas didn't feel irritated by the adjustment, and there was no reason to remain attached to his own clever solution when something simpler would work better.

The Virtue of Greed Seed stirred within him as the Void folded around it, hiding almost all of its aura from the surrounding Hell. A tesseract began rotating within Sylas' eyes for the first time in a long while, spacetime bending around the Seed until its presence became calm and controlled, with only the smallest threads allowed to leak through.

The first failed Candidate rushed into an emerald Rune formation and died the instant that thread of Greed touched it. Its Will seemed to tear itself apart from the inside, flesh splitting across its chest as the Madness within reacted violently to the Virtue it had failed to reach.

Sylas didn't stop to watch.

More Runes formed ahead of him as he moved, each one simple compared to what he was capable of creating but positioned with enough precision that they began functioning together. A spatial glyph redirected one attack into another Candidate, the resulting collision triggered a second formation, and the Will released from their deaths flowed into a third Rune that carried another trace of Greed into the next group.

One death became several without Sylas adding much more energy.

The formations spread ahead of him like parts of a machine assembling themselves while already in motion, emerald lines twisting into gears, rings, and layered glyphs that only moved as much as necessary. Some redirected momentum, others caught loose Aether or Will from the dying Candidates, while the smallest formations carried those tiny traces of Greed exactly where they would cause the greatest collapse.

Fanelei could tell that Sylas was using far less power than before, but the result was several times more efficient. Entire chains of failed Candidates fell apart before the three of them reached their positions, each death providing enough movement, Aether, or Will to help trigger the next.

Cheri had an even harder time following where one technique ended and another began. Sylas' Rune Mastery, Will, space manipulation, and Telekinetic Martial Arts blended together so naturally that a single adjustment to one formation could change the outcome several kilometers ahead without him visibly doing anything else.

What stood out most was how little Greed Sylas was actually releasing.

The failed Candidates reacted so violently to the Virtue that flooding the area with it would probably clear an enormous path in seconds, yet Sylas continued keeping almost all of it hidden behind the Void. The tesseract in his eyes rotated steadily as he controlled each leak with absurd precision, never allowing more into the world than he needed.

Scurrying Madness was preparing something, and Sylas had no intention of showing his entire hand before he saw what it was.

Sometimes the easiest way to force an enemy into a mistake wasn't to crush them as quickly as possible. It was to apply enough pressure that they felt their plan slipping away, while still leaving them convinced they had enough time to finish it.

The enormous doors ahead were finally beginning to grow in Sylas' vision, though the distance between them was still measured in scales that made ordinary movement meaningless. More failed Candidates poured across the region and tried to close around him, but the chain of Rune formations continued spreading ahead, leaving corpses behind without ever forcing Sylas to slow.

The closer he came to the doors, the more bodies Scurrying Madness sent. That alone told Sylas that whatever it was waiting for still hadn't happened.

That was when he noticed a small group far ahead and slightly to the side of his path for the first time.

There was too much space in Hell to account for everything at once, especially with light-years of terrain filled by an endless sea of humanoids, so Sylas almost dismissed them as another collection of failed Candidates.

And that was when they noticed Sylas and the others as well.

Sylas' eyes narrowed as he realized their Wills were different, and almost at the exact same moment, the group stopped moving as they noticed him as well.

These weren't more Madness failures. They weren't from Hell at all. Was this what Scurrying Madness was stalling for? Holding them back just enough that their paths would cross?

However, it was Cheri's expression that changed the fiercest as a hidden badge on her started to heat up.

The group looked over at the same time, their eyes focusing not on Sylas, but on Cheri.