Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1296: Prione Ravager

Sylas walked forward until he was just a meter away from Casteel, his gaze calm. The latter was actually quite a bit taller than him, and to his credit, even with the shocking damage he had taken, his Will had held on for long enough that his Armor was still attempting to reform itself.

He wanted to growl, to rage, but his body was already beginning to shut down. Vaguely, he could hear his allies dying all around him, and he barely registered the fact that while Sylas was fighting them, he was still slaughtering an army of over 200 more all on his own.

How many ways could he split his attention? Why didn’t he even need to summon his Warlord Armor? Was he even capable of summoning it?

Sylas just looked at him for a moment as though trying to see him breathe his last. But that was just what Casteel thought was happening. In fact, Sylas was waiting, curious to see if he had something else hidden in his sleeve, some new method Sylas had never seen, maybe a unique Rune Master method.

But there was nothing at all.

Disappointing.

Sylas raised a finger and then pressed it down onto Casteel’s chest. The latter was frozen in such shock, his body still in the process of shutting down, that he couldn’t even react to it.

The claw pierced through his damaged armor and then right through what remained of his heart.

BANG!

Casteel exploded, and yet not a single drop of blood even touched Sylas at all.

Calm, unbothered, without the slightest hint of fatigue in his expression, he turned and left as the last of the Rhinos were completely wiped out. It could be said that it would take quite a while for the Rhino Lineage to rebuild its contingency of F-tiers. It just might even affect their E-tiers in the short term as well.

They still had many more F-tiers. But these... these were the strongest of them.

And they couldn’t even touch a hair on Sylas’ head.

...

There was silence once again in the council room. There might have even been silence across all those caring to watch this event unfold in the Sanctum.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t seen F-tiers this powerful before; they certainly had. The top of the leaderboards wasn’t a joke at all.

The problem was that they had never seen an F-tier come into the Sanctum with this level of strength already. And those that had even been close had all used their Warlord Armor.

Sylas’ methods... there was no Clan or organization that they could pin it to at all.

What was that blade that snatched Will? Why did that feel so much like the abilities of the Serpent Lineage by a completely different, unknown mechanism?

What was that Rune-canceling ability that he had used?

No, what was the foundation of his Combat Matrix itself? Was that space? They had never heard of someone with affinity high enough to build their Combat Matrix methods on such a thing, and to be strong enough to combat the Warlord Armor with it alone...

Why wasn’t this Sylas Grimblade on the Combat Matrix Index Leaderboards? Why was he completely unknown?

Where the hell had he come from?

”This is your last chance, Gralith,” the 713th Lion Warlord was surprisingly the one to speak. He was a man that looked far more beast than anything else.

Golden locks flowed down his head, his jaw almost too chiseled and square. Scars littered his body, barely hidden even by the thick mats of hair that coated him from head to toe.

However, none of this was what made him particularly bestial. Instead, it was the pair of tusks that curled up from his mouth, and the second pair that curled down. That square jaw had made room for a quartet of tusks that shimmered like white jade, and yet still radiated a lust for battle.

The Lion Warlord was actually from outside of the Sector, part of a Race known simply as the Tusken Warlords. Their strength was brutish, and they had a unique form of bone manipulation.

Rather than being able to directly create and explode out with bones for armor or attack purposes like the Dogon could, the Tusken Warlords were able to turn their nutrition directly into fuel for their skeleton.

What was unique about this so-called ”nutrition” was that it was more than just about Aether or energy of the like. It was instead like they carried around a personal Wheel of Fortune with them.

They could snatch away the destiny and Will of opponents they killed, infusing it into their bones and making them stronger and more powerful.

There was no reason for them to infuse these abilities so much that they formed tusks. Truthfully, they could look very much human if they wanted to—although they weren’t.

The formation of the tusks was a form of pride for them. The larger their tusks, the higher their ranks in their respective Clans.

The Rhino Warlord was supposed to be among the strongest in defense in the whole Sanctum. But even though the Lion Lineage was meant to have mediocre defensive abilities compared to the best of the Lineages in this respect...

Practically no one in the Sanctum was a match for the 713th Lion Warlord, Prione Ravager.

Gralith’s eyes suddenly snapped open.

”Is it because I am quiet that you think you have the right to question me?”

The words came out as calm as ice, as immovable as a glacier.

Prione released a low, guttural chuckle in response. There seemed to be the heavy scent of murder in the air all of a sudden, a turn of events no one was expecting.

Wasn’t the rivalry between the Rhinos and Scorpions? How had this happened, exactly?

Prione had simply always followed the pride of the Lion Lineage to a fault. If he spoke, it was the turn of those around him to listen. Simple as that.

However, before things could go any further, a voice echoed.

”What is he doing?”