Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1556 BOOM. (2)

The explosion blew even Sylas back. He formed shields with his Morphic Silver Bearings, his Will forming one layer of protection after another.

Deep in his eyes, however, he was finally showing the slightest hint of something more than just indifference. It was one part intrigue, and another part shock.

One of the most powerful abilities of Spatial Casting was his ability to squeeze Runes into smaller forms. This allowed far weaker Runes to display power impossibly beyond themselves.

Since then, Sylasʼ Spatial Casting had evolved into his self-created Archon Casting, and he could easily replicate these same things but to an even greater extent. How much he could squeeze Runes was highly limited, and though still limited through Archon Casting, it wasnʼt nearly as much.

Sylas felt that even reducing the size of an F-Grade Rune by 20% was possible.

This didnʼt sound like much, but the instability of a Rune on that level meant that if Sylas succeeded in guiding it toward completion, it wouldnʼt just be a matter of doubling its strength. There would be a difference of orders of magnitude.

He could probably make a 10 Foundation Rune display the strength of a 100 Foundation Rune with this approach.

But there was a problem with all of this.

Sylas could do this for a long while now, but he hardly ever used this ability in battle. So what was the catch?

The catch was that the difficulty in doing so for larger Runes was too high. Even Sylas, and even with Archon Casting, had to limit himself to Runes at and below 10 Foundations.

And, when the Rune destabilized, the only one to suffer backlash from it was Sylas himself, because a Rune was tied to the Will of a Rune Master before it was fully imprinted onto the world. It wouldnʼt become independent until the casting was successful.

Before Sylas had Archon Casting, it was especially not worthwhile. That was because the result of Spatial Casting back then would only be a Rune with the strength of around 70 Foundations or so.

Sylas could draw such a Rune with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back. Why even bother to risk using Spatial Casting at that point?

And even when he got Archon Casting, he could now easily draw 100 Foundation Runes, so why risk it anyway? The only catch was that he didnʼt have many 100 Foundation Runes that he knew, so it could still come in handy for the time being.

The only method through which Sylas had found to use this form of Spatial Casting effectively was by targeting the treasures of his enemies.

Because treasures already had their own self-sustained Runes, if Sylas could comprehend them mid-battle, take control of them with his Will, and then forcefully shrink them, he could make the weapons of his enemies self- destruct.

In fact, if he was desperate enough, there was nothing stopping him from doing this with his own treasures as well. The self-destruction was quite good.

But even this was pretty limited in effectiveness.

This ability only worked best when he was targeting E-Grade Treasures with some F-Grade Runes he could exploit. The self-destruction of a mere F-Grade weapon wouldnʼt kill anyone Sylas couldnʼt already easily kill himself.

So unless Sylas walked around with an arsenal of Legendary Grade F-Grade Treasures like the ones he had given Cassarae for a rainy day, self-destructing weapons was mostly a waste of his time as well.

And if he was up against an F-tier warrior that he needed something like that against-like Authrione, for example -the latterʼs Will was so powerful that there wasnʼt a chance for Sylas to take advantage in the first place.

This form of Spatial Casting felt like it had so much potential, and yet there were so many roadblocks.

And yet...

[Wave Eight Cleared]

A single Glass Giant destroyed the entire eighth wave for Sylas.

Sylas slid to a stop, his feet leaving deep trenches in the ice and snow. The heat wave that radiated out from the destruction was so great that even the relentless hail from above was melted away, falling in rain droplets instead- much of which was simply left in sizzling piles of steam before they could even reach the earth.

All Sylas had done was take control of all the Runes in the giantʼs body that he could manage to, using Extricate as a bridge to sensing and feeling them out. Because of his Glassvolt Poison Aether, he crushed all the Will within the giantʼs body-not to mention the fact it was now completely dead and technically had no ancestors... Then he squeezed, shrinking all of the Runes he could by 10% in a single go.

Sylas had only been casually testing it out, not expecting too much. If it took out a few hundred, it would be a decent enough strategy to use from time to time.

But this...?

Even he wasnʼt expecting this.

Logically, he knew it was because of a very specific set of circumstances. In the real world, if he wanted to take control of the Genes of a person with stats as great as the Glass Giantʼs, he would need to deal with the hurdle of Gene Locks and probably their Ancestorsʼ Wills within their bodies as well.

But...

Sylas suddenly realized that he had stumbled onto quite the shocking ability.

There was maybe nothing in the entire universe with as much latent potential as a living being. The destruction a self-destruction could cause was simply catastrophic.

Sylas had no idea that there were special techniques designed to do exactly this at the moment of birth. But he had just created one that was on the level of the very best. In fact, it might very well be the strongest self-destruction technique in the entire universe... Casually formed from a bit of experimentation, being the product of several Legendary Professions matched with the touch of a Primus Luminaria.

Sylas looked up at the ninth wave finally fully formed.

He had already been quite fond of using people like weapons to claim victory. This was just another step forward.