Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2445: Knew

Sylas sat alone several hours after dealing with Weaving’s gift, the heart Slithering had torn out of Scurrying Madness floating several inches above his palm. It still beat despite everything that had happened to it, each contraction pushing blood through vessels that no longer connected to anything while a dense Greed Will pulsed along with every movement.

There were no traces of the machinery that had once surrounded it, nor anything left for the Omnimous to analyze in the way it had analyzed Scurrying’s cyborg body. Two had built technology around the heart and used it as part of Scurrying Madness’ new form, but what Sylas possessed now was simply flesh, blood, and Will.

That made the question of what to do with it simpler, though not necessarily easier. Sylas reached out with his Greed Seed and allowed only the smallest amount of its influence to leak free, causing the blood inside the heart to surge toward the side closest to him almost immediately.

The Seed buried within his existence stirred with enough force that Sylas cut the connection before it could progress any further. He could absorb the blood, and he had little doubt that doing so would strengthen his Greed considerably considering this wasn’t some diluted Will gathered from a random Disciple, but the heart of the creature that had once represented Greed before Rat replaced Scorpion.

Under ordinary circumstances, Sylas would have already begun, but this time he hesitated long enough for his thoughts to turn inward. Of his three Virtue Seeds, Greed was the one he trusted least, not because he feared losing control of it, but because it was the one Seed that had never truly been his.

He had killed Keyesen and reaped the Virtue of Greed directly from him, taking something that had only manifested because Keyesen’s Spirit Beast Lineage had produced a representation extraordinarily close to the original Scorpion. Sylas hadn’t understood Greed deeply enough to form the Seed himself, nor had his body naturally produced it through the path he walked.

Lust was different, despite the fact Sylas would have once considered it the Virtue least suited to him other than Sloth. Every major evolution he experienced had been followed by that same overwhelming demand from his body to reproduce, an instinct buried so deeply into his Genes that discipline could suppress his actions without ever eliminating the urge itself.

He had gone from an ordinary F-Grade Human born on Earth to an A-tier Demi-God Human Simioid in only a handful of years, compressing what should have required countless generations into a single lifetime. With every leap, his body had responded the same way, demanding that those improvements be passed forward before something happened to him.

That was the essence of Lust Sylas had come to understand, evolution followed by continuation, and the Virtue had formed naturally from that process. Even the increasing difficulty powerful existences faced in having children fit the concept perfectly. Greater Genes created greater value while also making successful inheritance far more difficult.

Pride was even more intimate.

Sylas’ attention shifted toward the Seed that stood above the others, and for the first time in a long while, his thoughts concerning it weren’t entirely comfortable. Pride hadn’t been handed to him and it hadn’t been taken from someone else. It had formed because his understanding of himself and his refusal to bend had reached a point where the Seed had no choice but to manifest.

He had even rejected the greater well of Pride that the universe offered. Where the Monkey King borrowed, adapted, retreated, and used whatever advantage was available, Sylas had built inward until his own Pride became something the universe drew from instead of the reverse.

There were few things Sylas possessed that felt more unquestionably his than that.

And yet, Humanity itself had been touched by the Monkey King long before Sylas was born.

That realization bothered him more than he expected, especially now that he had time to think about what it meant beyond the immediate battle in Hell. Sylas leaned back slightly while the Scorpion heart continued beating above his palm, his thoughts drifting toward the Human Simioid Race that had followed him for so long.

He had always found it strangely underwhelming compared to almost every other important aspect of his Foundation, though until now he had mostly dismissed that as a consequence of Humanity’s weak starting point. His Bloodline influenced him constantly, his Will shaped practically everything he did, his Rune Creation continued opening new paths, and even the Genes he built himself routinely changed the direction of his growth.

His Race, by comparison, mostly made his body stronger and gave him a foundation durable enough to continue evolving. That was useful, certainly, but considering how deeply Race could define an existence, Sylas had always expected there to be more.

Now there was a possible explanation.

If the Monkey King had spent countless years subtly shifting Humanity into a replacement for Monkey, then Sylas couldn’t even be certain how much of the Human Simioid path had developed naturally and how much had been guided toward compatibility with Pride. The Monkey King’s work had been subtle enough that even Sylas hadn’t noticed it until the answer was practically placed directly in front of him.

The more Sylas thought about it, the more the comparison to his Greed Seed irritated him. His Race had been shaped by a path he hadn’t chosen, while his Greed Seed came from a path he had never properly understood before taking it, leaving two important foundations inside him that were useful without necessarily being things he would have selected for himself.

That might not matter much at his current level, but Sylas had no intention of remaining where he was forever. The God Realm would eventually stop being some distant destination and become the next obvious step, and by then simply possessing an A-Grade Race wouldn’t be enough.

If he intended to rise further, he needed to start laying the path toward an S-Grade Race now.

Sylas’ gaze returned to the Scorpion heart, and the direction of his thoughts shifted with it. Keyesen had been a member of the Spirit Beast Race, while the Scorpion Lineage had existed as one of its powerful branches even before everything surrounding Greed began to surface.

The heart in Sylas’ possession went much further than that.

It represented the origin from which that Lineage had ultimately drawn a portion of its strength, the original Scorpion that had once stood as the representation of Greed before Scurrying Madness became Rat. Even Keyesen’s manifestation had only been an echo of that existence, enough to touch the Virtue but nowhere near enough to recreate the whole.

Still, the Spirit Beast Race itself remained a Mortal Race. Sylas narrowed his eyes slightly as that thought settled.

Was that really good enough to form the foundation of an S-Grade Race?

Even if the Spirit Beast Race had borrowed a fragment of the original Scurrying Madness, it remained only that: a fragment. Their Scorpion Lineage had managed to produce something impressive within the Mortal Realm, but Sylas had never been interested in stopping at something merely impressive when there was a path to something greater.

If a diluted portion of the original Scorpion could create what Keyesen had become, then why couldn’t Sylas use the source itself to create a result countless times stronger?

The idea came so quickly maybe someone else would have already started working on it, but another problem stopped him before he could move any further. He didn’t want to become a Scorpion, and he never had.

Sylas had only walked that path because it was the option placed before him when he entered the Beast Warlord Sanctum. Gralith had given him opportunities, the Scorpion Lineage had taught him valuable things, and the connection had eventually led him to Greed, but none of that meant the creature itself represented Sylas Grimblade.

If he was going to rebuild the foundation of his Race, choosing a Scorpion simply because he happened to possess its heart would be no better than accepting Human Simioid simply because that was what the world had given him.

Sylas let the heart hover in silence for several moments before finally looking up toward the skies. If a Scorpion wasn’t the answer, then the question was what creatures could carry the foundation he wanted instead.

He already knew.