Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2442: Well Done

The answer had been sitting in front of Sylas for longer than he cared to admit, hidden beneath facts he had already accepted separately. Scorpion had once represented Greed before Rat took its place, while Hippo had represented Wrath before Boar somehow replaced it, and Sylas had spent so much time thinking about those distortions that he had never seriously questioned whether they were the only ones.

But then again... this one had been the least obvious of them all.

Pride still belonged to Monkey, or at least that was what everyone believed. Sylas watched another pulse of Pride leave his Seed and flow into the unstable figure before him, and the absurd compatibility between his Human Simioid Race and the Monkey King’s path suddenly stopped feeling like a convenient coincidence.

Humans hadn’t evolved from monkeys. They had evolved from apes. The distinction was small enough that most people would never bother dwelling on it, but that might have been exactly why the method worked so well.

Replacing Scorpion with Rat became obvious once someone knew where to look, and the same was true of Hippo and Boar, but changing Monkey into Human didn’t require rewriting the entire story. It only required shifting the truth enough that everyone would accept the new shape without ever realizing something had changed.

Sylas’ thoughts accelerated as his Human Simioid Race, Monkey King Armor, Golden Battlefield, and the ease with which his body had always accepted Pride began aligning with one another. The Monkey King hadn’t been trying to preserve monkeys as the representation of Pride at all. He had been using Humanity to replace them.

The scale of that idea was enormous precisely because Humans were everywhere. Sylas had learned long ago just how common his Race was across the universe, and while Humanity might not stand at the summit in raw Bloodline or Race Grade, there were more of them, more worlds carrying variations of them, more environments shaping them, and far more ways for their Pride to manifest.

A king could be proud of an empire while a scholar took pride in an answer no one else could find. A warrior could place everything in strength, a mother in her children, and someone with nothing at all could still refuse to lower their head before another person, allowing Humanity to produce an almost endless number of reflections of the same underlying concept.

Monkeys were a representation of Pride in the past, only to become silly, foolish incarnations and less intelligent versions of their ape counterparts through history. Ultimately, Humanity evolved beyond apes, leaving monkeys even further behind. And just maybe... that was the purpose from the very beginning.

A truth hidden in plain sight.

That was probably why the Monkey King’s method had been so difficult to notice. He hadn’t forced Humanity to become something alien or rewritten their history until the deception became obvious. He had nudged an already compatible Race in the direction he wanted and allowed sheer numbers, variation, and time to do the rest.

Then Sylas had appeared.

His Pride had always been fundamentally different from the Monkey King’s, and their previous battle had made that distinction painfully clear. The Monkey King drew from the greater well, borrowed Champion Will whenever it suited him, changed his definition of victory when circumstances demanded it, and considered retreat little more than another tool available to someone sufficiently certain that he would eventually win.

Sylas despised that philosophy because his own Pride rejected dependence at its foundation. He had formed his Virtue Seed from himself and eventually broken away from the greater well of Pride far enough that he was beginning to create an authority that belonged to Sylas Grimblade alone rather than merely reflecting something the universe already possessed.

That should have made him the worst possible result for the Monkey King’s plan, yet Sylas now realized it might have made him the greatest. Of all the Humans scattered across existence, one had finally become prideful enough to stop reflecting the universe’s Pride back at itself and begin creating his own.

If Humanity truly was being cultivated as the new representation, then Sylas wasn’t merely another successful result. He was proof that the replacement could surpass what came before it.

The world snapped around them as the Monkey King suddenly drew far more heavily from Sylas’ Pride Seed, golden Will pouring into his unstable body until the missing sections of fur, flesh, and armor began filling in. Sylas felt the drain clearly, but rather than resisting, he watched the flickering edges of the Monkey King’s existence become increasingly solid and understood exactly what was happening.

Of course the Monkey King would take from him.

The man threw his head back and laughed as the pressure rolling from his body spread across Hell, strong enough that even the Arcane Madnesses slowed for a moment. By the time the laughter settled, there was almost nothing unstable left about him, and only then did he finally turn his head toward Sylas.

"Our Prides were always different."

The grin on his face was exactly as Sylas remembered it, carrying the same irritating certainty that had defined every conversation between them. "You think taking from another means admitting you weren’t enough on your own, while I think refusing something useful just to prove you never needed it is stupidity."

Another surge left Sylas’ Seed, and the Monkey King’s Will became heavier as he accepted it without the slightest hesitation. "I don’t mind borrowing from you at all, Sylas Grimblade, and I don’t mind taking from anyone else either. That is why my path is better."

Sylas didn’t bother responding because they had already fought over the answer once, and neither of them had changed enough to suddenly accept the other’s reasoning. What mattered far more was the shift he felt in the Monkey King’s Will as the last traces of instability disappeared.

This was no longer a projection, an incarnation dragged forward through some broken connection to the past, or a suppressed remnant struggling to maintain itself through the Madness System. Whatever restrictions had once tied the Monkey King to that structure had been broken, and Sylas realized that all he had done was provide enough Pride for the man to force himself the rest of the way free.

The Monkey King rolled his staff from one shoulder into his palm before turning back toward Two, treating the countless years behind whatever history existed between them as though they amounted to little more than an inconvenience. His Will had completely solidified now, and the presence standing there felt nothing like the fractured versions Sylas had encountered before.

"Shall we dance, Two?"

Two remained silent for a moment before a low chuckle escaped him, growing until he finally raised both hands and began to clap. His glowing eyes fixed on the Monkey King as the smile returned to his face.

"Well done... well done... Three."