Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1272: Chi.

Sylas only took a step forward, but the distance he crossed was leagues beyond that. With Old Brama’s speed, he had already taken Sylas over a kilometer away from the scene, and that was after backtracking due to Sylas’ opposition.

But whatever distance there had been, Sylas closed it with nothing more than a step, the space around him seemingly shrinking on command.

Runes began to flicker to life around him, rotating with an emerald hue that imbued them with his Will, stamping them into existence.

”Step out,” Sylas said calmly.

Speride was still amongst the others, not having stepped out yet. But when he saw Sylas suddenly appear, he froze for a moment. When he heard the words, his pride seemed to flare up.

With a flicker, a flexible, thin sword appeared in his palm.

BANG!

He shot forward, his speed blinding. It was a simple, straightforward attack. But it was also the sort that was almost impossible to find a flaw in. Perfect in its simplicity, almost regal in its sharpness.

There was a royal, but delicate air to it—an attack that was infused with Speride’s own unique Will.

This was the first time Sylas was fighting someone who could stand amongst the wider Sector. Although a certain Thryskai young genius had come to the Milky Way, he had been suppressed as an outsider.

Speride, though... was not. He boldly displayed his strength, displaying unique strengths and techniques.

As simple as the strike looked, Sylas could feel the shifts and changes, the years of training, the millennia of ancestry that went into refining those training methods, and the blood and sweat that had forged it all.

Sylas had always known that he wasn’t using his Will optimally. But a single strike from Speride made it all the more obvious.

Unfortunately...

Chi.

All of Speride’s momentum seemed to be instantly eaten up. His sword stopped a single inch from Sylas’ nose as though it had burnt out.

Speride blinked in surprise, not understanding what was happening at all. And then the realization hit him, his eyes opening wide.

”You—!”

Chi. Chi. Chi.

Danger hit Speride’s senses like a swinging sledgehammer. He hurried to accelerate backward, dipping to one side, and then another. His hooves tapped along the ground in an elegant cadence that left rippling Aether on the ground as though disturbing the surface of a calm lake.

He drew his blade in a circle, his hairs standing on end all the while. He realized in that instant that Sylas was a Space Rune Master. Those existences were not only rare, but also incredibly difficult to deal with.

What made Sylas even more extraordinary was that he... he was casting far too fast.

One spatial blade after another took shape, almost invisible in the way they formed. Sylas wasn’t just creating them, he was forming them from blind spots, using Speride’s own Aether as cover, and often even just using the rays of the sun to hide them in plain sight.

It was a shocking amount of control, and it instantly put Speride on his back foot for what looked like a minimal amount of effort.

Even now, several exchanges into the battle, Sylas was just standing there, his hands in his pockets, his trench coat billowing in the wind. The only thing that seemed to suggest he was fighting at all was the fiery glow of green in his eyes.

Chi. Chi. Chi.

Speride suddenly came to a stop. The region had already been cleared out. Between the battle between the C-tiers high above and that surging might coming from Sylas and Speride, no one wanted to be close anymore.

But they certainly didn’t want it now.

A green aura came from Speride as well, but this one was far more natural, almost like he was communicating with nature itself. Greenery began to bloom, but it didn’t seem to form an attack. Instead, Sylas could almost feel the latter’s senses becoming sharper, stronger, harder to fool—as though the world itself was opening up to him.

He weaved his Will into the world not to suppress it, but to become one with it. And right then, the spatial blades that had seemed so impossible to detect before became as clear as day, reflecting like silvery glass in his eyes.

Speride’s pupils darted around, back and forth, as he tracked them all, feeling out changes for new Runes taking shape as well. It seemed that this was his own unique Rune Master–related Unique Gene. A powerful one at that.

BANG!

Activating a movement Skill, Speride’s pace accelerated beyond normal means. In that brief instant, Sylas was sure his Speed actually touched seven figures and then went beyond, blurring as he closed in the distance.

’Interesting.’

Sylas still didn’t move. Unfortunately for Speride, he was no normal Rune Master.

The shades of green forming threads in Sylas’ irises began to dance as his Weaving Irises suddenly pulsed to life.

All of a sudden, the spatial blades in the surroundings froze and flashed.

They teleported, space distorting around them as naturally as breathing until they fused into a single being—a Rune with over 40 Foundations layering into a mesh of several of a kind.

BANG!

Speride slammed right into the concentrated wall of space as though a bird slamming into clear glass. As funny as the visual might have been, the devastation was no less near-lethal.

His bones shattered, his face was pancaked, his body feeling as though he had run full speed into his own demise.

Sylas’ Weaving Irises pulsed again and the concentrated wall changed shape, becoming a teleportation Rune that sent Speride high into the skies. He was so disoriented that he didn’t even have the wherewithal to use his Will to resist the teleportation, and by the time he realized his folly, it was too late.

BANG!

Speride shattered to pieces, a rain of his blood and gore falling like a rain from above that didn’t so much as touch Sylas’ clothes—the bits and pieces that would have being reflected by an invisible barrier.

As for how he died?

A residual strike from the power of his own handler. Sylas didn’t even bloody his own hands.

On the star ship, the man of the big cat path watched Sylas with flames practically spewing from his eyes.