Genetic Ascension

Sylas landed on the ground with a heavy boom, his eyes sharp and focused. He looked toward Jala and Alex, who were practically on their last breaths. He didn’t know, nor did he care, how they had managed to survive.

With a wave of his hand, his telekinesis picked them up off the ground.

[Absolute Dominance has been Established]

[Champion Team formed]

[Would you like to name your Team?]

[Yes][No]

Sylas was about to say no when he paused, frowning.

Names… names again.

He recalled that day that felt like a lifetime ago. It was the middle of the trial and the heirs of the powerful families of Earth had yet to make themselves known.

Sylas remembered seeing the leaderboard of City names, recalling how silly they were. He also remembered how he felt back then.

Those people probably thought everything was a joke when they chose those names. They chose them carelessly, thinking they’d wake up from this lucid dream soon, right back in their beds.

It wasn’t like him to waste mental space on sympathy for others, but Sylas could empathize with their situations. He wondered how rational he would have been in that situation, and ultimately how the name they had become known for was branded forever with their naiveté.

Depending on how you looked at it, this could be a matter of great pride, a sign that they had managed to make it so far even without advantages. Or, it could be seen as a permanent stain.

Sylas himself could still recall that day in the volcano, the greatest stain on his own life, the last time he had felt true fear, the suffocation of it all. How would he react if that moment was permanently broadcast, branded as a constant reminder of the day he was the most inferior?

He never cared about the opinions of others. But the constant reminder of himself… that was something that he couldn’t withstand.

[Would you like to name your Team?]

[Yes][No]

Sylas looked at the question again and then closed his eyes.

[Team Name {Grimblade Lineage} has been chosen]

One day, that name would rock the universe, he swore it. It didn’t matter what disadvantages he started with. He would crush them all beneath his heel.

Every single one of them.

A pulsing radiance came from Sylas’ True Pride Seed.

[Madness (Silver)] – Progenitor

[The Madness consumes you, but does not control you. Instead, it becomes your tool to both control yourself and others. You, while steeped in Madness, maintain your wits about you. Your enemies, though, are not so lucky] [+2000% Charisma]

[+2000% Will]

WHOOSH.

There was a rush as the swirling gate of Aether opened up further, forming a spinning sphere of black, silver, and blue energies that expanded until it swallowed them all up. All that was left behind was silence and a lingering Will that seemed to tower into the skies.

The vessel with Brama was left behind in the same exact location. As for the ship of three dense black blocks, it hovered in silence, looking out into the world without a word. It was as though the B-tier had completely fallen into silence.

Within the ship, the middle-aged man sat in complete silence. Darkness swallowed him up from all sides, his expression unreadable.

It was hard to tell how long he had sat there. It might very well have been days before he showed the slightest hint of movement.

But the instant he did, a fissure appeared across his face. Like the crack of a porcelain vase, it ran up his face, pulsing red energies churning within.

“To think… that I would actually die like this…”

He continued to stare out, replaying the scene of Kraziel splattering against the ship’s shields over and over again. Somehow, it was so infuriating that it was amusing.

Slowly, he reached out a finger. Every movement he made only seemed to form new cracks in his body, revealing more of the crimson energy eating him alive from the inside out. Every crack was like a new fissure into the abyss of a churning mass of rouge.

Even if he was going to die, though, he had no intention of leaving the world without first leaving an imprint.

Was it petty of him to go after an F-tier for outdoing him like this? Sure it was. But he didn’t care in the slightest.

He slowly wrote out a message. It contained several tidbits of information. However, because even moving the slightest bit caused him to race toward death even faster, he had no choice but to be very selective with what he wrote.

[Primus Imperium. Abridge Sector. System interference.]

He pushed his Will to write more, but the finger he was holding up crumbled, a blinding red light coming from it.

His jaw clenched. He wanted to write more information, he needed to, but he couldn’t push himself any more. It took several days just for him to stabilize enough to do this much.

Unfortunately for him, no matter how unfair it was, there was no changing what was already happening. There was no stopping it.

His head slowly turned, only to find that Old Brama had actually stepped out of his ship and was walking toward the Veil Human’s vessel.

In a rare change, Brama had actually entered his Unitaur form, but his legs actually seemed entirely formed from metallic parts and gears woven in gold and oozing an equally golden Aether. It was like he had completely reformed the bottom half of his body, and the aura he was exuding as a result had multiplied several times over.

The middle-aged man, himself, was a Rune Master. He could see the same thing Kaeryn of the Ossarans had seen—that being that Brama’s ship was nothing but a fusion of several ships.

Realizing this, he knew what the fate of his own ship was going to be.

He wanted to stop it… but could he? Could he even finish writing the words he wanted to..2