Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2252: Glass [Bonus]

[Bonus chapter thanks to Chronotitan. No hearts for you]

Sylas looked up at the bolts as they descended, his gaze indifference.

It struck down, passing right through him. The old man tried to do something to intervene, wanting to hear the name, waiting for Sylasʼ answer, and yet even he failed.

But…

When he thought Sylas would die… Sylas only continued to sit there, unmoved and unbothered.

The bolt had passed right through him as though he wasnʼt even there, vanishing through the ground beneath him like it was still searching for its target.

The skies rumbled above. Maybe in confusion, maybe in a fury that it had missed, but it ultimately slowly receded, fading away into obscurity.

Sylas continued to look upon it calmly.

Every time he made a breakthrough in comprehension of the void from now on, this ceiling would likely react in kind, and it would come to strike him. If his advancement wasnʼt far enough along to keep up with the reaction of the crimson lightning, he would more than likely die long before he could manage to make it to the pinnacle he was looking for.

But he wasnʼt worried about it in the slightest.

Sylas pressed a palm to his knee and then slowly got up. His body tensed once and then relaxed in an odd stretch, then he exhaled.

The old man blinked, his eyes narrowed, and then he looked up at Sylas. Confusion colored his features as though he wasnʼt quite sure if Sylas really was there or not.

His eyes said that Sylas was, and yet his senses didnʼt pick up on anything. It was like he was existing between the strands of reality itself.

But how could a D-tier possibly hide from his senses? That didnʼt make any sense at all.

And then the old man suddenly realized something else.

His pupils constricted into pinholes, the gears in his eyes rotating along with the change as though to signal they were directly responsible.

”… Are you still a Fathomless Rune Creator?”

The old man was not sure. He was having a hard time sensing anything from Sylas.

Sure, a large part of that was definitely because he was projecting his Will across time and space right now. And it wasnʼt a small number of years either.

But even though he only had a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of his senses at the moment, a D-tier should have even less than that fraction of his power.

If he was correct, so long as Sylas made it to the B-tier in this path, he would be capable of completely hiding even from his main body. And considering he stood nearly alone even against other S-tiers… That was too difficult to wrap his head around.

”Exact Rune Creation Paths have become meaningless to me now.” Sylas said, almost like he was speaking to himself. ”It seems Iʼll have to think of something else for my Classes…”

Originally, Sylas wanted to use his Tri Class Constitution to build out one Class for each of the Rune Paths. He didnʼt think that he would have the time to carve out a new Rune Path for each one, so he was going to use the Grimblade Bloodline and take advantage of his role as Ancestor to benefit from the comprehensions of his family.

This was really two-pronged for him, honestly.

This was less about relying on others, and more about trying to push his family a bit more so that they could protect themselves if ever need be.

However… his Void Path had made all of that completely meaningless now.

He had stepped beyond the end of the horseshoe.

Maybe he should have expected it already. If he saw through the reason the Void existed both as a Path and a Mastery level, then reaching beyond the need for an exact Rune Creation Path was a given.

However, just as Sylas had said, this wasnʼt just a Rune Creation Path. It was almost a Path that alongside Rune Mastery itself, always there, always existing.

If Rune Mastery was built on the concept of Will and Creation.

Then this Path was built on the concept of Charisma and the Void.

However, this Path had a name that only those who had stepped onto it could hear. No matter how much the man wanted to hear the name, he wasnʼt able to… Not unless he could place his ear against the barrier of the universe itself.

Only then might he be able to hear the name as it echoed through the crevices of all there was, weaving between Runes and atoms, of rays of starlight and spatial debris.

Only then.

”I see…” the old man said slowly.

His hair settled back down, his eyes returning to normal. After a while, he closed his eyes, time shifted around him, and Sylas visibly watched as the man aged in real time before him.

Sylasʼ eyes narrowed.

The man wasnʼt injured, not severely, anyway. He had taken some brunt of what the crimson lightning descended with, but in action he was already so close to the ceiling himself that a bolt meant to destroy Sylas wasnʼt going to do irreparable harm to him.

No… the man was aging so fast because of the time warp around him. He was sitting in meditation.

For a man as powerful as him to be aging as fast as he was…

Millions of years had to be passing at a time. No, maybe even more than that. Hundreds of times more than that.

Yet, he hadnʼt moved a single inch the entire time.

And he was spending all of that time trying to comprehend the words Sylas had spoken.

But unfortunately for the old man, he was in that latter group. His Will was surely powerful enough to shatter his Rune Seed, but he had travelled much too far.

Chi.

Cracks like fine glass began to appear around the old man and Sylasʼ frown deepened.

He was going to die.

If this continued like this, how was Sylas going to get his hands on another Creation of Key?

Chi.

The man shattered like glass.