Genetic Ascension

Chapter 649: Black

"The Wills of the people are a tonic to the Lord. There is no greater concentration of Will than what is in one's Life Blood."

The words came out in a tumble and then Sylas could feel an audible snap come from the man's mind. He already wasn't holding onto the Great Priest's neck with very much power, so when Richen suddenly collapsed, Sylas didn't bother to catch him.

The Great Priest fell to the ground dead.

'Life Blood...' Sylas thought. 'Concentration of Will? Is he referring to Blood Essence? Is that why they're harvesting so many bodies here?'

Sylas found himself slowly piecing together something that likely held some resemblance to the truth.

'Why is the Thryskai so reliant on these clergymen? And why these altars? Now they're looking for a way to distill and concentrate the Will of the people?'

Sylas' mind churned.

He had already experienced how possible it was to gather Will from blood. That was precisely how he had made his breakthrough with the Scorpion Warlord armor.

So when Richen mentioned "Life Blood" he immediately thought of the possible distortions to names this place might undergo and realized that he must be speaking about Blood Essence.

If he was correct, these Great Priests didn't have access to abilities like his Extricate Talent. How could they? It was a Legendary Path Talent for a reason.

Because of that, they had to rely on far cruder methods.

Sylas' gaze flashed and he began to look at the corpses laying around him in a new light. 'As expected... they're wasting over 99% of the Blood Essence they're accumulating. They're targeting valuable organs, namely the heart and even digging into bone marrow to try and extract what small tidbits and pieces they can. To overcome the low quantity, they're trying to make it up with the numbers, which is why they've killed so much.'

When Sylas used his Taboo Bond Talent on the region, he could see the separation of Blood Essence and normal blood before him. That confirmed his hypothesis.

'In that case, why do they need this Will?'

Sylas could only speculate, but if the Thryskai were relying on religions to spread their control over the region, how related would Wills be to that?

Were they accumulating Will somehow through the faith of the people? And if that was the case, were they using it for the sake of forming a bridge to Earth like the Thryskai had? To what end?

There seemed to be only one way to find out...

'This World of Mirrors...'

This also reminded Sylas of something else. The world of black ice that had been hidden within the pyramids. Could these matters be linked?

Sylas turned back to Cole and Alex.

"Call Lana and Jake here. I am not sure what will happen from here, but the likelihood that we will return is low. This is likely the final stretch of the Dungeon."

The two seemed surprised.

This Dungeon felt so endless and vast, but Sylas seemed capable of always finding the pressure point and pressing.

While it felt like they had done a lot, and been in a lot of danger as well, it had ultimately only been two days or so since they entered this Split Realm.

Anyone else might have spent weeks figuring everything out and clearing all the Legs at least. It became clear to them that Sylas' power was only part of what made him so fearsome.

His intelligence was probably his greatest weapon. Though... the fact he had such an array of talents to rely on only made it easier.

...

Soon, all of them were gathered and Sylas took a stand at the center of the platform, using his visualization to scan the Runes forged of bone.

As expected, they were very similar to the ones that he had already studied with just a few tweaks here and there.

The platform of his city only allowed a one-way flow of Will, which was why Sylas was able to pour his own Will into it to destroy the platform by reversing the flow.

But here, the platform was designed to incrementally take on Will from this side as well. Namely, the Will from the desecrated corpses.

However, Sylas also didn't need to rely on that method to destroy this platform. That was because the Runes were formed of normal human bone here and not diamond. It would only take a whip of the Basilisk King's tail to deal with all of it.

But this time, he didn't want to destroy this platform.

If he was correct, this was the passage to the final challenge of this Dungeon.

[Leg 004 Cleared]

-

[Leg 005]

> [Sever the hold the Lord has over Earth]

Sylas felt that he had already observed everything he needed to.

Standing back up to his full height, he pulled out the scorpion king's corpse once again. A foul smell hung high in the air, but he ignored it as he used Extricate to pull out another large segment of Blood Essence.

His Will poured into it and he began to draw one Rune after another.

The blood warped and morphed in the air, and beneath Sylas' strength, they solidified into a pulse of light that covered his body in an illusory violet armor with a whipping scorpion tail.

'It won't let me fuse with the Basilisk King in this state...'

Sylas could feel that if he tried to push Fusion to activate, his armor would shatter. But he was prepared for this. The moment Szorn had told him he wasn't compatible with the Scorpion Warlord Inheritance, he knew that it was inevitable.

But what surprised him was that he might not be able to fuse with the Basilisk King... but he could fuse with the Bone-Tailed Lizard.

'Good.'

Sylas' body shifted and morphed, a long line of spikes appearing down his back as a bony tail grew from his spine, filling the empty space of the scorpion's stinger.

He clenched his fists and unclenched.

"Let's go."

The platform rippled and suddenly...

CRACK.

The world fragmented into scattered pieces, like the image of a mirror collapsing to the

ground.

Then, everything turned black.