Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2433: Rat

The five Fallen Madness Disciples changed almost at the same time. Their Wills had already begun layering, but what followed was less controlled than the resonance Sylas had been observing before, with Greed pouring through the cracks between them and returning several times stronger until the other Fallen Madness Disciples throughout the region began screaming and clawing at themselves as though something inside their bodies was being dragged toward the surface.

Sylas’ emerald domain trembled under the first wave, while Caelum’s gold didn’t fare much better. The creatures that had previously been little more than obstacles began growing stronger by several degrees at once, their fragmented Wills tightening as they tore into one another before turning toward the two sources of resistance still standing within the madness.

An enormous claw struck one of Sylas’ Spatial formations and left a crack across it.

Sylas’ gaze flickered. The Fallen Madness Disciples were growing stronger. Not just the five that Caelum had just taken out, but all of them. It was like they were feeding on the frenzy of Greed Will leaking out from the doors.

Caelum had entered B-tier Heaven Rune Creation less than half an hour ago, yet the growing resonance was already producing creatures capable of meaningfully interfering with his Runes.

Sylas drew several loose Strokes through the air and folded the nearest group away from himself, but another wave immediately filled the opening. Caelum responded differently, layering Time until the creatures charging him were caught between delayed moments, yet even those restraints were beginning to bend beneath the weight of their growing Wills.

Neither of them could ignore the five anymore, and Sylas’ gaze passed over them again as he reconstructed what he knew. Caelum had arrived in Hell carrying a device designed to keep these particular Fallen Madness Disciples not only imprisoned, but isolated from one another, and he had valued them enough to sacrifice two Silver Acolytes rather than allow them to die.

There weren’t many reasonable explanations for that, especially when Sylas considered who Caelum was. The Professors valued personal evolution above almost everything else, Caelum was an Acolyte preparing to become one, and the strange mixture of machinery and Runes in his container matched the same construction now becoming visible inside the opening doors.

All of that pointed toward one possibility. Whoever he was working on behalf made him not dare to allow these five to die.

A mission from a Professor was the simplest answer.

Sylas didn’t know what Caelum had been ordered to collect or why these five had qualified, but their Wills gave him a place to start.

Another of the five lunged toward Sylas, and its body disappeared beneath emerald light as Space folded around it. Instead of crushing it, Sylas held it still for just long enough to inspect its Will more carefully, allowing his senses to sink beneath the fractured outer layers until he found something uncomfortably familiar hidden underneath.

The Rat... but not quite.

It wasn’t exact, but that difference bothered Sylas more than a perfect match would have. He had encountered that Will enough times that forgetting its texture was impossible, but what he sensed now felt like an imperfect version of the same thing, less like another Path and more like someone reaching toward the same destination from the wrong starting point.

The creature broke free before Sylas finished studying it, forcing him to redirect its momentum into three others. Their bodies collided hard enough to tear apart the obsidian below, but even with limbs twisted and flesh missing, their Wills continued growing as the resonance spread deeper into Hell.

The doors opened farther at that moment, and Sylas’ attention shifted toward them as the Will spilling through the widening gap finally reached him clearly. The instant it touched his senses, several thoughts that had remained separate collapsed into one another, because there was no similarity to consider this time and no room for uncertainty.

This time it wasn’t just ’like’ the Rat. It was the Rat. And yet far more powerful. The same but stronger.

The Will was perfect down to the smallest detail, carrying the same Greed Sylas had encountered every time Rat somehow returned after circumstances that should have killed him. After Sylas himself had killed him.

Sylas had never placed much weight on those repeated appearances before, since there were too many methods in the universe for surviving death for that alone to mean much, but the five Fallen Madness Disciples changed the context entirely.

Each of them carried an incomplete variation of that same Will, while a Legacy Acolyte had been gathering them with a device designed to keep them apart. Add in a structure embedded inside Hell and built from technology sophisticated enough to coexist with Hell Rune Creation itself, and the pieces started sliding into place.

The doors slid apart another several kilometers, allowing the yellow eyes beyond them to move fully into view as the rest of the body slowly emerged from the darkness. What waited there wasn’t a Rat in any normal sense, because almost nothing about the colossal frame behind those eyes was biological.

Black metal formed its limbs and spine, articulated sections disappearing farther into the chamber while enormous chains pierced through the structure and anchored it directly to Hell. Only two portions of the creature remained flesh: the yellow eyes staring out from its metallic skull and the heart beating openly behind a rib cage of dark alloy.

Every contraction of that heart released another pulse of Greed, causing the surrounding madness to surge while the five Fallen Madness Disciples convulsed in response. Sylas watched it through several beats, his Runeweaver Eyes stripping away the layers surrounding it until one final inconsistency became impossible to ignore.

That heart wasn’t Rat’s.

The Rat wasn’t supposed to represent Greed at all. Among the original seven creatures, that position had belonged to the Scorpion, and yet somehow Rat had replaced it so completely that even the modern Madness Path treated the substitution as natural.

Sylas looked at the beating heart again and finally understood what he was seeing. A metallic body carrying Rat’s Will had been built around the heart of the original Scorpion, which meant the creature chained behind those doors wasn’t simply another incarnation of Rat.

Its laughter erupted before Sylas could take the deduction further, shaking Hell hard enough that the five Fallen Madness Disciples staggered while their Greed climbed again. He barely listened. The sight before him had already dragged another memory to the surface.

Cheri’s guild had spent years attempting to reproduce something resembling Lust through its disciples, creating imitations that approached the true Virtue without ever becoming it. Caelum had arrived carrying five people who now looked disturbingly similar in principle, except whatever process had been applied to them was reaching toward Greed instead.

That finally explained why the technology had bothered Sylas from the moment Caelum produced the cylinder. Legacy hadn’t simply discovered Hell or learned how to exploit pieces of Madness from the outside; someone within it had sunk their claws deeply enough into this place to interfere with one of its oldest embodiments and build machinery directly into the structure holding it together.

And whatever Professor stood behind this had done so with technology Sylas could no longer dismiss as strange augmentations or mechanical replacements.

At the very least, it was on the level of the Omnimous.

Sylas’ gaze moved from the cyborg Rat to the five Fallen Madness Disciples still resonating before him, and the scattered pieces finally settled into something close to a complete picture. He still didn’t know every detail, but he knew enough now to understand that what Caelum had stumbled into was far larger than a simple collection mission.