Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2512 Not Until

In the past, any Aether Fanelei absorbed went straight into her body. Then, she had to use her other abilities to convert it into something her Genes could accept.

It was an inefficient process. The more complicated the energy she tried to consume, the harder it got to keep her different foundations from interfering with each other.

Now, countless Runes appeared within the flow itself, separating out the energy's characteristics before spreading them through her rebuilt foundations.

The Convert worked right alongside The Drain. Aether that should have been incompatible with her Genes was reorganized before it even entered her body.

The whole process ran so smoothly that the Cryst Heaven representative didn't understand what was happening right away. By the time he realized the energy he was gathering already belonged to Fanelei, she had pointed a finger at him.

A thin beam crossed the battlefield and pierced his forehead before either Sage Heaven genius could react.

His body collapsed, and the remaining two A-tiers immediately changed tactics.

Their Wills surged outward. They reinforced the restrictions they'd already set up while trying to cut Fanelei off from the Aether around her.

That was a reasonable response, especially after watching her swallow an attack that should have been strong enough to kill her. However, they had misunderstood what her abilities were built on.

Fanelei's expression didn't change as the Runes around her pulled inward. For a moment, the area around her seemed to lose the very Aether that held it together.

The Hollow.

In her first life. Fanelei had deprived herself of almost everything. She'd suppressed her own Genes, her Talents, and even much of the strength her Analei Bloodline gave her. She survived on little more than water and Aether, chasing an extreme understanding of Gluttony through deprivation.

That life had eventually carried her to Legend, the absolute limit of the Mortal Plane.

Now, after Sylas had helped her restructure the foundations of her Path, she could force that same deprivation onto the world around her.

The two Sage Heaven formations started losing their connection to the Aether keeping them alive. Their creators tried to compensate right away, only to find that every adjustment left another piece of their structures open to Fanelei's influence.

She stepped forward. There was none of the urgency you'd expect from an A-tier facing two extraordinary geniuses.

The Sage representative tried to retreat. Runes he'd built to restrict her were already useless.

Fanelei caught his wrist. A faint fluctuation spread through his body, and the energy reinforcing his defenses vanished.

Her palm hit his chest, and the impact sent his corpse flying backward.

The last A-tier reacted much faster. He abandoned his old formation and started building a new sequence of Runes that would have cut Fanelei off from the Mesh around her entirely.

But, the moment his technique started taking shape, Fanelei's Will shifted.

The Mirror.

Instead of physically consuming his Runes, she reflected the relationships he was trying to set up. She reproduced part of their structure through her own Will, then turned them against their creator.

His expression changed. He had already put too much of his strength into the attack to pull back.

Fanelei's finger went through his forehead, and the third corpse hit the ground.

Alex stared at the three bodies, his expression getting more and more complicated. He had expected Fanelei to beat the A-tiers. But how effciently she'd done it was another matter entirely.

More importantly, her Runes weren't acting like anything he'd seen before. Their relationships kept shifting as the different parts of her Path supported each other.

Before he could look into it properly, though, the Beast Heaven representative finally moved.

His enormous figure crossed the distance in an instant. Fanelei immediately raised a palm to catch his fist, but her expression changed the moment their Wills collided.

The gap in physical strength was huge.

The man's human head guided his movements with incredible precision, while the lion head had instincts that let him react to danger without waiting for his conscious thoughts to catch up. Together, they struck a strange balance that got rid of many of the weaknesses that usually came with a Constitution-focused Path.

Fanelei's wrist cracked under the impact. Before she could fully adjust, the man's lion head let out a roar that scrambled the Runes around her.

His next fist came crashing toward her chest, and she had to redirect it instead of trying to absorb it.

The man grinned.

"Not so impressive now, are you?"

His human head was already working out how Fanelei was moving. When she tried to retreat, he shifted to cut off her best escape routes.

At the same time, his lion head kept tracking the fluctuations in her Will. That let him respond to her attacks before she'd even finished them.

Fanelei was pushed back. Her injured wrist healed, only to crack again in the next collision.

For the first time since the fight started, she was running into real resistance.

The problem wasn't just the difference in Tier, either. The man was extraordinarily talented.

His two heads weren't two separate minds fighting over one body. They complemented each other. The human worked out what should happen, while the beast reacted to what was happening, and together they attacked with a coordination most opponents would never see coming.

Unfortunately for him, Fanelei understood the value of having more than one perspective better than almost anyone.

She had seven lives. And unlike the man in front of her, she had spent those lives building different foundations of the same Path-

Her first life gave her The Hollow, approaching Gluttony through deprivation, its most fundamental state. Her second produced The Drain. Her third, The Vessel, pushed consumption past ordinary energy and into Genes and Bloodlines.

Her fourth life developed The Convert, letting her reorganize whatever she consumed. Her fifth produced The Mirror, giving her the ability to reproduce structures through Will without physically taking them.

Her sixth life had tried to pull all of those foundations together through the Madness Key, and The Tyrant was born from it.

Bute as extraordinary as those Paths were, she had never been able to truly bring them together. Her Rune Mastery had been far too weak.

The different foundations all existed inside her. However, the connections between them were crude. Whenever she tried to use several at once, the inefficiencies piled up until the whole thing was more trouble than it was worth.

Not until Sylas.