Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2372: Seed

There was one other thing Sylas had come across that carried the name Seed as well, and the more he thought about it now, the harder it became to believe that the overlap was meaningless.

Spark Seed.

The Spark Seed was the kernel of truth that dictated the direction of a person’s Rune Mastery, a concept he had accepted for so long that he had stopped questioning why it had been described that way in the first place.

Yet now, with Nosphaleen still held against him and the branching structures of his own Seeds laid bare before his mind, that old familiarity no longer felt harmless.

The canopy surrounding the myth of Dragons was enormous, stretching across bloodlines, Will, Karma, Races, and even Spacetime itself, but the canopy surrounding the Phoenix seemed broader still when he considered its relationship to Spark Seeds, Rune Mastery, evolution, and change. Sylas didn’t believe that meant the Phoenix was somehow superior, and if anything, the imbalance suggested that he still hadn’t seen the complete picture of what a Fate Dragon truly represented.

Its suppression of Serpentes might only be the portion of its original purpose that remained visible, or perhaps the single part it had never managed to bury completely.

His thoughts returned to Earth and the most basic explanations for how life had developed there, explanations that always began with simpler creatures before eventually arriving at humanoids.

Animals and Beasts appeared long before civilizations capable of recording history or consciously reshaping the world, and if that progression held true beyond Earth, then the same pattern might repeat across worlds throughout the universe.

Beasts relied more heavily on instinct, bloodline, and inherited traits, which made them far easier for evolution to alter from generation to generation than something as complex as a humanoid mind.

If that pattern truly repeated everywhere, then any scheme ancient enough to influence the development of life itself wouldn’t have begun with humanoids at all. Its earliest targets would have been Beasts, the forms of life that came first and the foundation from which more complicated existences eventually emerged. Once Sylas considered the problem from that angle, things slowly became clearer.

Perhaps there had been an era so distant that the rulers of the universe had descended from Serpentes, and someone had gone to impossible lengths to ensure such a reign could never happen again.

It was equally possible that Serpentes hadn’t been first at all, but had simply been the most important or dangerous of the ancient Beast lineages. Sylas didn’t yet have enough information to distinguish between those possibilities, but both pointed toward the same conclusion: the Serpentes had mattered far more in the distant past than their current state suggested.

That naturally led to the question of what humanoids had that Beasts almost universally lacked. The answer was obvious.

Rune Mastery.

There were exceptions, of course, and Yamero alone proved that a Beast could become an extraordinary Rune Master, but those exceptions mattered precisely because they were so rare.

For humanoids, Rune Mastery served as the tool that allowed comprehension to compensate for inferior bloodlines, weaker instincts, and bodies that didn’t carry the same natural authority as Beasts.

A Beast inherited the laws written into its Genes and expressed them almost without thought, while a Rune Master studied those same laws until they could be dismantled, reconstructed, and eventually replaced.

One path relied on what had been passed down, while the other allowed someone to look at what they had been given, and then shift and mold it to their whims. The distinction was so fundamental that Sylas found it difficult to believe the two systems had developed independently.

That made the Fate Dragon and the Phoenix feel like two different mechanisms aimed at two different stages of existence, and yet wholly connected nontheless.

The Fate Dragon represented dominance, forcing one interpretation to stand above the rest until alternatives became impossible, while the Phoenix represented hope, rebirth, and the possibility of becoming something greater than what came before.

Neither concept was inherently benevolent, and both could become tools of control when pushed far enough.

Dominance could suppress until nothing else was allowed to rise, while hope could persuade entire populations to abandon what they had for the promise of something better waiting ahead.

One restrained through force and certainty, while the other guided through possibility, yet both could shape the direction of a Race without that Race ever realizing it had been manipulated.

The Phoenix had appeared alongside what was essentially the rebirth of Earth’s people, and countless new Spark Masters had awakened in its wake. Spark Seeds had bloomed across humanity at the same time that the symbol of rebirth and change entered the picture, each Seed offering a direction in Rune Mastery and presenting itself as a new path forward.

Sylas looked inward again, following the golden networks spread through his body from Pride, Greed, and Lust. He had always treated those Seeds as expressions of Will, personality, and personal growth, but the more deeply he immersed himself in Telekinetic Martial Arts, the more artificial the separation between those things and Rune Mastery became.

Every time he manipulated the Core Stat Runes woven into his Genes, bodily control and Rune control blurred until they felt like different perspectives on the same underlying structure.

His body was built through Genes that carried Runes, his Seeds altered those Genes, and his Will directed the Seeds while Rune Mastery gave that Will a language through which it could reshape the world.

The more he followed those relationships, the harder it became to argue that any of these systems truly stood apart from one another. Even the abilities granted by Sin and Virtue Seeds could be turned toward Rune Mastery if someone understood them well enough, and Sylas had simply never chosen to use them that way before.

The Seven Seeds, Spark Seeds, Madness, bloodlines, Beasts, humanoids, the Fate Dragon, and the Phoenix had seemed like separate systems only because Sylas had encountered them at different times and from different directions.

Now they were beginning to overlap, not cleanly enough for him to claim he understood the whole, but enough that the shape beneath them had become impossible to ignore.

Somewhere near the center of all of it stood Rune Mastery. It fit too well to be an accident.

Rune Mastery was the one tool humanoids possessed that allowed them to study the laws they had been born beneath and change those laws with their own hands. It allowed someone with weaker instincts, inferior bloodline, and less natural authority to understand reality deeply enough to dismantle those disadvantages, and more importantly, it gave them a method to alter the course that should have been decided for them.

In the end, that was what mattered most.

Beasts inherited what they were, while humanoids could comprehend enough to decide what they wanted to become. If someone had already shaped Beasts through bloodline and instinct, then the most effective way to control humanoids would be to bury that same influence inside the very system they believed granted them freedom.

Sylas’ emerald eyes became still as the conclusion settled into place.

Someone hadn’t merely forged chains for them. They had taught entire Races how to build those chains themselves.