Genetic Ascension

Sylas didn't even use the abilities he was most confident in. These new Skills had hardly been broken out of their seals. Still at Fragmented Mastery, Sylas hadn't felt comfortable or confident enough to use them against the likes of Israeal and the others, so he hadn't brought them out.

But now, as though a child bringing out a new box of toys to play with, he was casually test-driving them on Alex, and yet the latter could hardly seem to keep up at all.

BOOM!

The mountain Alex landed in exploded with a fiery fervor. Smoggy blackness spread out as though from a rapidly burning forest fire. They licked at the world like flames, combusting it to ash as though born from the fires of hell, and yet they carried not the slightest heat at all.

They weren't flames. They were something else entirely.

Sylas stood in the skies, his feet pressing down on space as though it were solid ground. The Mesh of Reality whined around him as his weight seemed to increase, his bulging mass of telekinesis pressing down on it with greater and greater might.

Now that he finally understood why his telekinesis worked the way it did, his ability to manipulate it—especially with his two Progenitor Flame Abilities at his beck and call—was simply on a level beyond what others could fathom.

He wasn't changing his weight. He was changing his mass itself in real time.

From the weight of a single human man, he suddenly weighed two, then three, then ten, then a hundred.

The gravity of the world melded with him, and he suddenly took a step forward as Alex slapped his palms together.

There was a booming echo through the world, and a stream of destruction surged.

And yet, Sylas only punched out a single time—his mass becoming two hundred times, then three hundred.

The world bent around him as his mass, concentrated into a size far too small, began to pull on its laws.

When he punched now, the world obeyed in ways it simply had never before, as though he was forcing it to acknowledge a level of martial arts prowess he simply didn't have previously.

Alex's surge of destruction was split in two, bending and warping around Sylas' singular fist until the latter ripped right through his chest.

This time, it wasn't close to being split in six, but truly a fist-sized hole right through the center of his chest.

Alex coughed up a mouthful of blood, the blow so powerful that it burrowed a hole right through the mountain range he had just shot out from.

Alex's destruction had been all-consuming, large in scope and even wider in chaos. And yet, Sylas' was like the tip of an arrow—so perfectly controlled that it left a smooth trail in its wake. One would have thought that an artisan had carefully chipped away at the rock instead of what had truly happened.

Sylas continued to stand in the air, waiting to see if Alex would get up. There was a cold indifference on his face, and he was completely unmoved by it all. Even if Alex died right here, Sylas wouldn't lose the slightest ounce of sleep over it.

This man had put the entire planet at risk—Sylas' own family. In the future, Sylas would no doubt have to fight battles because of what Alex had done, putting his own life and limb on the line as well.

If Alex had risked all of that and couldn't even survive twenty exchanges, then what worth did he have being alive? It was better if he just died.

Alex coughed up another mouthful of blood, laying on the ground and twitching as he tried to get up. His Aether continued to surge, and then Sylas saw it.

The world around them was practically dying as Alex devoured more and more of it. The hole in his chest was being swiftly closed, and then deep inside, something seemed to snap.

A pillar of black shot into the skies as Alex unleashed a roar. It sounded layered, as though it were taking pieces of him from the past and from the future and fusing them into one, as though countless Alexes trapped in a cage were fiercely fighting for a way out.

Sylas saw through this with his Will and his new sensitivity to Runes. He could almost feel the emotion of not just the Runes around Alex, but their formation into Skills. And from that, he could even predict what was coming…

But this time, it wasn't a prediction of what was being formed, but instead an understanding of the price Alex was paying to activate this. It was like every Runic emotion was playing on his soul, and every time he devoured from the world, the world tried to devour a piece of him back as well.

'So much like the Seeds… and yet not… it almost feels… more fundamental… Gluttony… but by another name…'

There was a flash in Sylas' eyes as he saw through something.

Was this First Race of Earth actually so genius? Did they manage to distill the Gluttony Seed of an ancient, lost system into their Unique Gene, taking aspects of it to bolster their natural abilities to a level never seen?

Alex had the abilities of the Gluttony Seed without the Gluttony Seed, and he was applying it in ways the usual Gluttony Seed couldn't—or at the very least, Sylas couldn't.

Was that where this devouring ability came from? Was it just branching from the Gluttony Seed? Or did this represent something the Gluttony Seed would be capable of in the future if used properly?

But just when Sylas thought Alex was losing his mind, all of that bottled-up negativity was compacted into an arrow that shot for his mind.

There was little faster than the speed of thought, and it was before Sylas could react—slamming into his forehead and burrowing into his Will.

In a flash, Alex was before Sylas, stabbing into his chest.