Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1966: Slashed

The Dino Race that Sylas saw on Earth wasnʼt like the dinosaur species posited by biological historians. The latter group claimed that dinosaurs were actually feathered creatures, but the Dino Race Sylas saw on the statues didnʼt have feathers at all.

They were a scaled race. Sylas didnʼt even feel any pushback when he used the Serpent Rune Armor as a foundation to build a Dino Armor for Cassarae.

Back then, Sylas hadnʼt thought much about it. He didnʼt actually care to. The secrets of the Dino Race seemed irrelevant when it came to deciding between the First Race and the Great Ape Race. It even seemed like an afterthought compared to the Clypsians and Dogons as well.

Of all the Lineages, it was the very last Sylas would have ever chosen. He only gave it to Cassarae because it suited her overwhelming strength so much.

But... was he missing something? Was the Dino Race really a bird race?

Sylasʼ plan to become the Progenitor of The Sanctum had no choice but to be multi-faceted. He had to attack the problem from multiple paths. So, when he was given the chance to potentially tie a Lineage to a former Overlord Race of Earth, it made sense for him to do so.

If he could tie The Sanctum and Earth together, the odds that he would be acknowledged as the Progenitor were even higher.

But right now, something in Sylasʼ mind seemed to have begun to churn.

It wasnʼt triggered by something external, but instead by himself. Just now, he had used Reaper Sealwright to sense the ancestor of the big cats on a whim. He had been too stubborn to allow the Lion Lineage to maintain their false pride, so he crushed it in his own unique way.

However, that method had also opened up a new way of thinking for him.

If the Ancestral Will of a Lineage was more powerful, then it made sense to use it instead. But in this case... ʼThe Dino Race is the only one that didnʼt survive in some way, shape, or form on Earth. Why is that?ʼ

Sylas had already deduced that from the Great Apes, to the first Human Overlord Race, right up to the second Human Overlord Race, one could see the fingerprints of the First Race of Earth.

The Great Apes evolved into the first Humans, and then the first Humans copulated between one another to combine all of their races together to eventually create the population of Earth that Sylas knew now.

Every step forward was better than the last, and it was clear that a reconstruction of the First Race was slowly being worked toward.

However...

A Humanoid Dino Race?

Sylas had just assumed it was an anomaly. Maybe it took time for the First Raceʼs plans to kick into gear. After all, the Clypsians and Dogons certainly didnʼt have anything to do with their plans either.

ʼHumanoid Dino...?ʼ

Sylas frowned, his brows furrowing.

He had made a mistake. Why was he so interested in tying the Dino Race to the dinosaurs? The dinosaurs werenʼt humanoid, they were beasts. There was no evolutionary chain between dinosaurs and a humanoid version of them.

So where had the Dino Race come from?

A majority of Sylas perceived that he was overthinking things. There was no evidence of the Clypsians, the Dogons, or the First Race in Earthʼs science either. So why would he find evidence of the Dino Race there?

He was wasting his time trying to find a common thread through it all.

It was even more difficult because the extent to which he understood the Dino Race started and ended at what a version of himself who hadnʼt even reached Spark Mastery of the F-tier yet had been able to accomplish.

Cassarae wasnʼt a Rune Master, so Sylas hadnʼt needed to form a complicated Armor for her. He just sought to help her out a little bit and that was enough.

His understanding of the Dino Race was as surface level as could be.

ʼThe six extinction events of Earth arenʼt as natural as any of them seem...ʼ

Sylasʼ gaze flashed.

There werenʼt six extinction events of Earth. There had to be eight of them, no?

He remembered that opening line from the introduction that the Grimblades had given him when he was first learning about the Summoning and they were convincing their extended family to stay.

They had said that Earth documented six total extinction events, and each one of them actually represented the failure of a Summoning.

ʼHidden in plain sight...ʼ

When Sylas learned that Earth had been on their Ninth Summoning instead of their Seventh, he had been facing a Clypsian trapped in the same Dungeon Nosphaleen had been in.

Back then, the Clypsian had said that there were two Races he didnʼt know existed, the Clypsians and the Dogons.

ʼWhatever Summoning you think youʼre on right now... add two.ʼ

Sylasʼ body shook, a fierce aura radiating out from him.

He had missed something that was right in front of him.

The Dogons only got one Summoning. The Clypsians only got one Summoning. The Great Apes only got one Summoning before they became the Humans which only got one, and then there was Sylasʼ Humans who could be considered the second.

That accounted for five Summonings.

The First Race had at least one. That made six.

The Dino Race had at least one as well. That made seven.

So... who were the Overlords of the other two Summonings?

Sylasʼ mind churned and the statue of the Dino Race was slowly split in his mind. As though he could see the bottom of Earthʼs ocean right this moment, he stared into the maw of the Dino Race statue and then slashed it in two.

It separated, one becoming a feathered creature. It had a crown of proud feathers on its head and a pair of wings that commanded waves and storms.

The other was the depiction of the dinosaur that Sylas had always seen in media and movies, sometimes a raptor, sometimes a t-rex, always shifting and changing.

But beneath the two of them, there was a third form Sylas had almost missed entirely.

A... caveman?