Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1173: Rewards (10) [Bonus]

[Cleary my last curse wasn’t enough for you, chrono. Just wait. I’m cooking up something diabolical]

’I’ve got it.’

Sylas’ eyes flashed open, and the world swirled around him once more. He felt a strong sense of control and power as he delved into the Mesh of Reality, sinking his mind in deep as though pushing his fingers through moist piles of sand.

He sank in deeper and deeper until his Will and the Mesh of Reality around him practically had no difference whatsoever.

The two tomes began to shake—one in Sylas’ palm, and the other hidden away in the Madness Key.

“Get this thing out of me,” the little girl said, exasperated, throwing it out.

But Sylas could tell that she was actually being helpful, especially as the tome landed in his other palm. He had been too focused to notice the changes, but now he was feeling them in real time…

Really feeling it.

He was too obsessed with the Mesh of Reality, not realizing something that should have been fundamental from the very start.

What exactly was the Mesh of Reality in the first place? If he thought about it in Earth’s terms, it was a net where space and time interacted with one another, a playground of sorts where the laws of physics acted in their most fundamental of senses.

It made enough sense like that.

But what about in this world—the one that he was in right now? What were those “laws of physics” if not the individual Strokes of Runes? What were manifested laws if not Runes themselves?

He kept thinking of the Mesh of Reality and his Runes as two separate entities, but were they?

No, his thoughts were even worse than that. He kept thinking of the Mesh of Reality as though it was the foundation upon which Runes were allowed to exist, when in reality… it was the exact opposite.

The Mesh of Reality was only something that Sylas could interact with because Runes existed in the first place.

The moment that clicked into place, Sylas finally felt it. He could well and truly “see” the Runes for the first time. Rather than seeing them through the filter of the Mesh of Reality, he saw them for what they were…

The reason the Mesh of Reality could exist.

All of a sudden, he was able to feel their whispers with greater ease… when he called out to them, they responded even faster than usual—quicker, sharper. He drew Runes that would normally take him some time even faster than before.

Before, he wasn’t even sure if he would be able to use his strongest Scorpion Warlord Armor in battle because it took too long for him to draw. And while he still hadn’t reached a stage where he could draw it as instantaneously as the weaker versions… he actually could see a path toward where that was possible…

A stage where he would be able to pull out a +650000 Combat Matrix Index with the ease of breathing.

When Sylas started, he expected that he would have to make some profound breakthrough in his understanding of Space and Time, not realizing that—just as he had thought—these tomes were more fundamental to Rune comprehension and Mastery than his Progenitor Flame Abilities were.

As expected, his Progenitor Flame Abilities were coloring how he viewed these tomes. He was skipping steps, going beyond what he should when, in action and reality, he should have taken the approach of a newbie from the start.

These were tomes on Rune Enlightenment… of course they would be teaching him how to view Runes and interact with them, not how to use them. That latter step would come, but if he didn’t grasp the fundamentals first, he would never be able to put them to their greatest use.

But that just left one thing for Sylas to understand…

Why were these tomes clashing?

All things considered, it seemed like they should be of the same mind and heart. They worked together so well, so why did they seem to want nothing to do with each other?

The concept of dimensions wasn’t exactly foreign to Sylas. There were two general ways the scientists of Earth saw them. On the one hand, there was the directional way—that being that the only way to properly coordinate something was to know its location in the three dimensions, and the time in which it was there—that being the fourth dimension.

And then there was the more amorphous way, but that didn’t seem to apply here as far as Sylas could tell for now.

The reason he suddenly thought of dimensions was because that first concept was exactly how he thought of time and space most times, especially when he was thinking of them in the context of the Mesh of Reality. That only seemed natural.

But why would the two things you needed to map out the exact position of a Rune clash—?

Sylas’ eyes sharpened.

’Quantum mechanics?’

Sylas’ brows furrowed. He wasn’t a physicist, and what he knew about these things was limited to some introductory classes. He also wasn’t sure if he would even benefit all that much from having taken more advanced physics classes anyway.

What he did know was that the laws of the world he was used to in a macro sense ceased to make sense on the smallest levels of things. And technically speaking, weren’t the fundamental laws that made up everything technically the “smallest of things”?

If you needed both space and time to tell the exact location of something, but just the act of measuring the location of that something—or observing it—changed those fundamental parameters, then were space and time still the best ways to observe the thing?

These tomes seemed to be telling him a lot about exactly how to observe Runes in their most rudimentary forms, but playbacks of the double-slit experiment, and particles versus waves, were suddenly playing in Sylas’ mind on recall.

The short of it was that in the quantum world… all of this ceased to make sense.

But it also seemed that if Sylas didn’t comprehend this quantum world, he would never fully grasp the deepest depths of Rune Mastery at all.

Unfortunately…

There was no third tome here. In fact, one might not even exist at all.