Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1303: Fix

Sylas looked down at the scorpion tail coming out of him. Veins of black and dark violet had begun to practically ooze outward from beneath his skin. Whatever thick, vicious liquid it was seemed to use his heart as a pump, plowing it through and eviscerating his blood.

It was poison in the truest sense, a raging inferno of cancerous menace looking to eat into everything in its path.

Sylas could feel it. That Rage that didn’t quite feel like Rage, but more like… Madness.

Madness in the truest sense, as though the scorpion had lost its sense of self, or maybe that in battle, it had never had one. Its only goal was to take down its opponent at any cost.

There was no running, no hiding, no attempt at escape. It didn’t want any of that.

It wanted carnage.

This was the true path of the Scorpion.

[Earth Escape]? How could the Scorpion Emperor ever take such a path for itself? It would rather die on the battlefield, cut from limb to limb, its organs hanging out in a chorus of flesh and blood, its body an unrecognizable stew of steaming resentment and what ravaged remains it managed to claw from its enemies.

It didn’t want anything else for itself. It didn’t want a day without battle, without the constant edge of life and death chiseling its blade and using its soul as a whetstone.

It didn’t want anyone else touching even the faintest edges of its true self either.

It was a creature that preferred its solitude, its seclusion, to bury itself in the sands and allow the scorching heat to lick its wounds closed as it waited for its next prey.

It wasn’t a matter of honor. A Scorpion had no honor. It didn’t care to stab you in the back or claw out the heart of its own brother. It was a matter of its nature, a savage desire for blood that sunk deep into its bones.

It was what nature had made it. A feral creature, knowing not of peace or calm.

Collaboration wasn’t what it did.

However… Sylas wasn’t convinced that this was why it was lashing out at him. There were any number of creatures that would act similarly.

The Lion… there could only be one in a pack of lionesses, even to the point of infanticide to wipe out the lineage of any previous Lions who ruled. Why was it that the Lion Lineage didn’t face the same hardship? Was their Warlord Armor also incomplete in the same way? Would they also be attacked should they perfect it?

And that was just one creature. There were so many others.

This, though… it felt different. It was as though this creature had been waiting for someone, anyone, to overstep such a line, to make such a mistake, as though the root mistake was weaved into the Warlord Armor itself—

Sylas’ eyes flashed.

In that moment, he ignored the world around him, not even feeling Gralith’s hand on his shoulder.

Gralith, who was already on his seventh attempt in trying to walk up those wide set of golden stairs, felt his heart skip a beat as he looked back.

Sylas seemed to have passed out, the poison beginning to spread over him. The veins of black and dark violet had already crawled up his neck and were quickly making their way to his brain.

If his body was in this state, his Will was almost surely in a worse state.

However, Gralith was wrong. Sylas’ Will had hardly been touched. Instead, there seemed to be a standoff of some sort in the deep layers of his body, hidden away where the Will Core was meant to be.

It was simply… too sturdy.

Sylas was being attacked by backlash from the F-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor. Unfortunately for it, he had Enlightened Will, something that was entirely unheard of at the F-Grade. And that was before even mentioning the fact he had Demonic Will and his True Pride Seed on top of that.

His True Pride Seed’s presence alone was practically like an infinitely thick barrier it couldn’t hope to make it through.

It was just that even if his Will managed to hold on, if his brain died, the rest of his body would go with it. Then his Will would just be a crystal without a home.

At that point, it would just be a matter of time before Sylas himself dissipated away.

But even those thoughts had been thrown out of Sylas’ mind as he focused on one thing.

The Scorpion Warlord Armor and its Runes.

It was odd. When he was attacked just now, he hadn’t even tried to summon the Armor, he had just thought of something that might complete it. So where had the attack come from?

It was just as he had said. He had too many Wills inside of him. Aside from his own, he had aspects of the Giant Apes, the Serpentes, and the Scorpion.

All of them should be clashing and coming to a head. Even now, Sylas would have trouble using Fusion and his Warlord Armor at the same time.

The only reason he could even think about doing this now was because his Profession had evolved, but the two clashing Wills would weaken them both in kind and he had yet to properly resolve this.

Though… he felt that his recent Spark Mastery breakthrough might allow him to take this step forward. Unfortunately, before he could, this backlash almost took him out.

This was all to say that… the backlash itself had once again come from that hidden Will. This wasn’t a surprise—in order to affect his stats directly, the Scorpion Warlord Armor had to interact with his body on a very deep level.

But that was where the core of it all started.

In a flashing instant of time, Sylas had gone through the entire Scorpion Warlord Armor and found the root cause of it all.

‘Interesting… Fix it, then.’

BANG!