Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2490 Beyond [Bonus]

[Bonus chapter thanks to Killerquaker <3]

Sylas stood in silence, waiting for the next challenger to appear.

However, as the seconds passed, followed by minutes, the familiar fiuctuation of the challenge formation never came, lt seemed that after the countless deaths he had caused, the people of the Real World had finally decided that they had had enough.

Sylas didn't move to leave, nor did he attempt to provoke another response. He simply stood where he was, his emerald eyes resting upon the empty space before him without focusing on anything in particular.

For perhaps the first time in his life, his mind was almost entirely blank,

lt was a peculiar sensation, especially considering what he had just accomplished With Selfwrought Emperor, Void Sovereign, and Willborne Crown. His mental capacity had expanded by more than tenfold, and he could now accommodate an almost absurd number of thoughts without allowing them to interfere With one another.

And yet, there was nothing.

Sylas couldn't remember a time when he had experienced something like this. Even when he slept, some portion of his mind had always remained active, processing information, considering possibilities, or working through problems he hadn't yet solved.

But now, he simply stood there.

He didn't think about the challengers he had killed, nor did he consider what sort of consequences might follow the deaths of so many extraordinary geniuses. Even the various methods he had been developing to locate Cassarae seemed to have fallen quiet for the moment. He knew what had to be done, but for once, knowing and acting weren•t quite the same thing.

Eventually, a notification appeared before him.

[Creation Tower Challenges Concluded]

[All Challenges Have Been Successfully Defended Against]

[Dominion Established]

[You Have Officially Claimed Dominion Over All Creation Towers of the Skai Heaven]

Sylas read the notification once before turning around.

Nosphaleen stood a short distance behind him, her expression shifting when she noticed that he was finally moving. She had watched him tear through the challenges without offering a word, and although she had been pleased by his victories at first, the complete absence of any reaction from him had gradually made her uneasy.

She followed without asking questions.

The Creation Tower's authority responded to Sylas' Will, and a passage opened before them. A moment later, the two disappeared from the challenge space, leaving behind the countless broken Runes that had accumulated throughout his battles.

Sylas appeared high above Earth, the atmosphere parting around him as the teleportation completed.

Nosphaleen materialized a short distance behind hinn, but before she could speak, her expression changed.

There was something wrong With the Aether.

Even from this altitude, she could sense the remnants of an enormous disturbance below, the surrounding Mesh of Reality still struggling to settle after the violent forces that had passed through it. Several portions of the landscape had been torn apart, and the traces of crimson energy lingering in the air were so familiar that she recognized them almost immediately.

Xarvenya.

Nosphaleen's pupils constricted as she looked toward Sylas.

She hadn't known what had happened while they were inside the Creation Tower. She had assumed his unusual silence was related to the challenges, or perhaps the changes he had undergone during his evolution, but now that she could sense the damage beneath them, a far more troubling possibility began taking shape.

Her gaze swept across the ruined plains, searching for familiar presences. T hen she understood.

Nosphaleen moved closer and reached out, placing a hand against Sylas' arm. He didnit respond.

His eyes remained fixed upon the destruction below, but Nosphaleen couldn't sense even the slightest fluctuation in his Will. Considering how well she knew him, that frightened her more than any outburst of rage could have.

She tightened her grip for a moment before allowing her hand to fall away.

For a long while, neither of them moved.

Then Sylas raised a hand and twisted a Rune into existence.

The surrounding space trembled, and faint streaks of light began rising from the ruined landscape, gathering around the points where the Mesh of Reality had suffered the greatest disturbances.

They were little more than fragments at first, incomplete impressions left behind by the collision of powerful Wills and the destruction of the surrounding Aether. However, as Sylas continued manipulating the Rune, those fragments began connecting, their relationships allowing him to reconstruct what had happened.

The scene unfolded before him in ghostly streaks.

He watched Xarvenya standing before Tomoe, the crimson energy gathered around her finger. He saw Cassarae nearby, and then the remnants of the mysterious interference began appearing within the reconstructed image.

Sylas continued turning the Rune, allowing the scene to advance until the instant Xarvenya's attack erupted out of her control.

BOOM!

The ghostly image of the Demoness was hurled backward, the reconstructed explosion spreading through the air without disturbing the present.

Sylas stopped the Rune.

The scene froze, and for several seconds, his gaze remained upon the point where Xarvenya•s attack had first lost its cohesion.

Then he reached forward, his fingers curling into a Claw as he dragged them through the air.

The movement appeared simple, but the surrounding space reacted as though something had torn through its foundations.

Hidden Runes began revealing themselves, one after another, spreading from the point where his fingers had passed until thousands of intricate structures filled the skies. Some carried the authority of Space, others Time, while several more represented relationships that would have been impossible to distinguish without his current comprehension.

Sylas wasn't simply attempting to recreate the attack. He was following it backward.

Every use of power left some trace upon the Mesh of Reality, and even when those traces were concealed, the surrounding Runes would still bear the consequences of whatever had passed through them. If someone had reached into Earth from another location, there should have been a relationship between the point of interference and wherever that power had originated.

With his current Rune Mastery, reconstructing that relationship should have been possible.

The Runes began folding into one another, and the empty space before Sylas gradually transformed into an enormous tunnel. Its walls consisted of countless interlockinq formations, each one reachina deeper into the relationship between Space and Time while using the lingering traces of the mysterious attack as a guide.

The tunnel extended farther and farther, no longer following the conventional distances that separated one location from another.

Nosphaleen withdrew several steps as the pressure increased, her eyes widening when she realized that the structure Sylas was creating wasn't opening a portal to any location she could recognize.

lt was reaching beyond the boundaries of the surrounding world.

Sylas continued.

His Will poured into the formation, maintaining the delicate relationships between Runes that had already extended beyond what ordinary senses could perceive. The farther the tunnel reached, the more diffcult those relationships became to stabilize, and eventually even Void Sovereign began struggling to provide the necessary space for the structure to continue expanding.

But Sylas had already noticed something. The trail wasn't disappearing because someone had concealed it, lt wasn't disappearing because the distance was too great, either.

There was simply nowhere within the Mesh of Reality for it to continue.

His fingers moved again, forcing another layer of Runes into existence as he attempted to bridge that discontinuity.

The entire tunnel began to shake.

At first, the fiuctuations were small, little more than faint distortions along the outermost formations, but they rapidly spread inward as the Runes lost their relationships With one another.

Sylas' eyes narrowed.

He could see the problem, but seeing it and correcting it were two entirely different matters. The structure he had created required the laws on both sides of the passage to maintain some degree of continuity, yet the farther it extended, the more obvious it became that the destination obeyed a fundamentally different framework.

He attempted to compensate, changing the relationships between the supporting Runes and using Void Sovereign to accommodate the contradictions.

For an instant, the tunnel stabilized.

Then everything collapsed.

CRACK!

An enormous fracture spread through the surrounding space, and the thousands of Runes Sylas had painstakingly constructed shattered almost simultaneously.

The backlash struck him before the first fragments could disappear.

Blood burst from his eyes, running down his cheeks as the pressure tore through his internal organs. Several vessels ruptured within his chest, and the force of the collapsing formation spread through his body With enough violence that even his current Constitution struggled to withstand it.

Sylas didn't move.

His Healing Factor immediately began repairing the damage, but he paid it no attention, his gaze remaining upon the empty space where the tunnel had existed.

Nosphaleen reached toward him again, her expression tight With concern, but stopped when she sensed the change within his Will.

The killing intent was there, immense enough to make the surrounding Aether tremble, but it possessed an eerie calm that made its depth almost impossible to measure.

Sylas had confirmed what he needed to know.

Whoever had come to Earth and taken his wife hadn't originated from the God Plane. The interference hadn't merely crossed an extraordinary distance, nor had it come from some hidden corner of the Real World.

The trail had ended at the boundaries of the universe itself.

Whoever had taken Cassarae wasn't from the Real World at all.