Genetic Ascension - Chapter 1732

Chapter 1732: Not Enough [Bonus]

[Bonus chapter thanks to TheAuthor137. This overcompensating for what’s in your pants must stop. Leave me be]

The world slowed around Sylas, his mind working in overdrive.

Salivar was right. He had come here with the intention of killing him at his full strength. He had tried to cheat a bit, but apparently, he still wasn’t that lucky no matter how hard he tried or what number his Luck stat reflected.

But Salivar was wrong about something else. Sylas wasn’t sent here by the Weaver Guild—he had come entirely on his own. He had never been raised by anyone in this new world, he didn’t have some secret advantage, or any plan that wasn’t formulated by his own hands.

Everyone by now seemed to believe that he had come with great odds of winning, and Salivar was going all out, expecting Sylas to pull some sort of rabbit out of a hat to put him in his place.

Salivar had already not been taking anything for granted, but now he was well and truly going all out, displaying the path that he had always wanted to display to the world right before Sylas himself.

But Sylas hadn’t come with any guarantees of winning. All he knew was that Salivar was a Cryst Emperor, a powerhouse with strength and power the likes of which he had never had to face so directly before.

He was little more than a boat in a raging tsunami of tides and harsh winds.

Seeing those blades coming down from the skies, he knew that this was, indeed, a tall task. Just a difference of a single level, and yet the result was akin to a comparison of night and day.

And Sylas loved it.

BOOM.

Sylas vanished. The Runes around him changed; he was no longer casting F-Grade Runes. A crown of radiant gold appeared above his head, Runes of thousands of Foundations blooming out from him like the petals of a rose opening during its most ripe of seasons.

He ignored the suppression of Salivar’s array and appeared right before the man himself, a green-gold glow coating his fist as he punched. Chains rattled, and his hair danced in the wind.

Salivar’s eyes flashed in kind, a branch from his overwhelming tree slapping down to meet Sylas’ attack.

BOOM.

Sylas took a heavy step back, but his wrist twisted as the air beneath his sole exploded. As though timing it all, Runes appeared beneath his heel, and the ground below reacted as though he had personally stepped on it.

By coincidence or something of the like, the array landed in the exact same location and was shredded apart by Sylas’ feat of strength. At the same time, his twisting wrist caught the branch.

Chi. Chi. Chi.

Spiraling sword blades rounded Sylas’ forearms in a track of three, then four, then five and more beyond it. They crisscrossed across his flesh as though to dice it into minced meat.

Yet Sylas hardly seemed to react to the change at all, a roar leaving his lips as his Glassvolt Aether reacted.

Emerald lightning peeled into being, ripping into the body of the golden tree.

Salivar slapped out a palm quickly and it collided with Sylas’ chest, sending him flying into the skies. But he looked down at his hand after it connected, as though something was wrong. Why did it feel so weak?

It was like he had to cross hundreds of miles just to touch Sylas, and by then he had hardly any power left at all.

Before, this had been far more subtle, especially since it was a D-tier world they were in. But now it felt like a chasm that was hard to—

BANG.

Sylas’ fist collided with the side of Salivar’s cheek. Or, rather, the armor that coated it. The latter’s head twisted to the side, a great amount of power nearly shattering Sylas’ arm entirely.

Black scales flew and blood fell from the skies, yet the halo of gold that wrapped around Sylas quickly healed it as he followed up with a kick that shot right into Salivar’s gut.

This time, however, Salivar caught it.

The branch that had suffered a surge from Sylas’ emerald lightning only withered for a short moment before it shook, shaking off the destruction that was wreaking havoc within it just in time for Salivar to throw Sylas like a rag doll.

Salivar gripped Sylas’ ankle and raised him up high, slamming the latter down on his knee.

Sylas felt his entire ribcage shatter on impact, his air coming out in a gasp that took wisps of vaporized blood with it.

Salivar raised Sylas again, but this time he launched him into the air—right into the arms of an enormous blade that had been forming.

The blade descended, and Sylas crossed his arms before his chest, just barely managing to use the chains of the Scorned Wraps to block himself from a grisly end.

But that didn’t stop him from being driven into the ground so fast it felt like it took nothing more than a blink for him to go from as high as the clouds to beneath even the floor of the ice-cold ocean.

Sylas’ arms became a crumpled mess, his already shattered ribcage collapsing and compressing all the more. His flesh and bone became a smoothie of mixtures, forming a homogeny of pain within what remained of his scales, but the pressure of this sword simply wasn’t going away.

In fact, from high above, Salivar was pressing his fingers together, raising them high into the skies, and forming more.

All the while, the gold that touched Sylas’ back was eating into what reserves of energy he had left.

It wasn’t enough.

Sylas knew it simply wasn’t enough. What he was displaying now wasn’t enough.

He saw a familiar grin as his vision swam. It was arrogant beyond compare.

And then it reflected on his own face.

His canines grew, his hair flickering with a golden collar as a crown crawled across his forehead.

It seemed that… the only path forward was to well and truly go all out.

Today, the world would know the Virtue of Pride.

A roar shook the skies, and the golden sword shattered to pieces.