Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2301: Nothing

Orokhun breathed out. He was ready now.

It was only a small breath, no different from any other he had taken, and yet the planet shook beneath it. The tremor rolled out from the cavern and through the crust and up into the fog, and every layer of it turned over until it felt like the layers of the atmosphere might come undone, snapping open like a set of nesting dolls.

Then it stopped.

It looked like nothing at all had changed, and yet the flicker of light in Dry Mouthʼs gaze painted a completely different picture.

Orokhun rose through the stone, phasing through as though he was little more than a ghost. It felt like even the laws of earth and the physics that governed it had died along with the rest of the planet. It parted for him, severing its own bottom line, and a fog closed over his body as he came up into it.

He lifted his enormous head into the dead street to see what was left of Sylas Grimblade and yet… Sylas Grimblade was standing exactly where he had been. Hands in his pockets, scythe and brush on his back, eyes unbothered and indifferent.

Orokhunʼs eyes widened. His jaw came open a little. For a Vah as large as he was, he might as well have opened up a cavern in his mouth and invited Sylas in.

He lifted his tail and brought it down against the street once. He paused, waiting for something, and then he tapped again. It looked almost like he was knocking against the planet, waiting for it to wake up.

”Hey, hey, whatʼs going on here?” Dry Mouth spoke aloud as though Sylas couldnʼt hear him. He knocked again, and the attempt was simply worthless.

But his senses werenʼt failing him. They hadnʼt failed, and the planet was responding to him just fine.

He could feel it in the stone. Everything was seated correctly, everything was holding, every meticulous brick of his plan was situated just right.

Sylas looked at him and nodded.

”You are a bit interesting too.”

Orokhunʼs lip twitched.

What in the world was that supposed to mean?

Sylasʼ words made his skin crawl. It felt like he was a slave up for auction and Sylas was picking at his limbs and seeing how thick the muscle under his skin was.

And too? What did that mean? There were others? Who else was ”interesting”?

Did he look like something a person could simply collect?

Orokhunʼs tail came around, whipping forward.

He didnʼt bother with anything clever. He built up his body brick by brick with the most violent and vicious of methods. He had killed the strongest of the Vah with this body. It was the only inheritance he had ever needed.

The tail came down with enough force to open the crust of the earth itself.

Sylas raised a hand and stopped it. It was casual in a way that broke Dry Mouthʼs mind. He was so huge and Sylas was so tiny. How could he be so strong?

Orokhun stared at his own tail resting in that hand.

”...Let go,” he said.

Sylas glanced up at him.

”Let go,” Orokhun repeated. ”Let me try again. This is ridiculous.”

And to his complete astonishment, Sylas opened his hand and stepped back, giving him the room.

Orokhun roared.

The fog blew outward in a ring and the dead street cratered under him as he came forward, his head low, his mouth opening wider and wider until the whole of it eclipsed the space where Sylas stood.

His maw suddenly opened as wide as it would go and his jaws came down.

They stopped in their tracks.

Sylas stood, his hands inside them. One hand raised and one hand lowered, and in each hand he held a fang. He squeezed them down in his palms with a casual flare, and at the point where Dry Mouthʼs jaw was in one of its strongest positions.

Considering how large Dry Mouth was compared to Sylas, holding his fangs like that even if Sylasʼ arms were out wide would basically leave his maw no more than a sliver open. Dry Mouth should have all the power in the world to crush Sylas.

And yet… he couldnʼt.

Instead, he could only lay there mute as Sylas seemed to be inspecting the inside of his maw.

They didnʼt seem like much to look at, the fangs, that is. They were stumps worn smooth for the most part, sitting flush with the rest of a tooth line like a set of baby teeth that had never matured. And yet Sylas held something in the air that felt so much more substantial and sharp compared to what his eyes could see. It was an odd feeling... like Dry Mouthʼs real fangs were hidden in the void.

Sylas leaned in a fraction to get a better look, and then noticed something else…

There was no scent coming from Dry Mouthʼs maw either.

No venom, obviously, but also no blood, no wet organic, rotting warmth. It didnʼt smell like the mouth of a beast at all.

Orokhun couldnʼt move the entire time. He couldnʼt even form the thought to move, it was like Sylas was an impossible to climb mountain.

Sylas Grimblade had simply walked into his strongest ability… He couldnʼt even begin to understand… Just how?

Orokhun felt something rise in his chest that he had not felt since he was a hatchling with stumps for fangs, listening to his brothers workshop names for him.

He was, quite genuinely, about to weep.

This entire planet was entirely disconnected from the system. That was what he had done. He had severed and ripped that connection apart.

Someone of the Overlord Race who relied so heavily on it should have been broken, their skills locked away, their Professions rendered useless, their Genes mute… And yet…

Sylasʼ Vipermancy flared.

It came off Sylas in a wash of green, here, in the one place in the Sector where a Profession had no business functioning at all. It didnʼt even strain, then fell on Orokhunʼs Will with the full weight of a sovereign and crushed it into pieces before he could form a single thought about resisting.

The chains laid themselves over him.

—

[Contracts]

…

[5. Orokhun: Lv. 197]

—

The fog swallowed him, and Dry Mouth was gone from his own world, pulled into the Hibernation Realm.