Genetic Ascension

1554 Lit Path

[Wave Five Cleared]

Sylas stood amidst the carnage, his breathing steady and even. If not for the heated steam coming from his nostrils, one would have never guessed that he had undergone a bout of physical exertion at all.

He looked down at his hands as the sixty-second timer wound down.

Not good enough.

He felt like there was more to gain, more to unearth, to pull out of himself. But Sylas also felt that he was quickly running to his limits as well.

There was no way he could progress to an S-Grade Race. The gap was too large. There was still so much runway within the bounds of an A-Grade Race, but he had no idea how to unearth that potential either.

He didnʼt have impurities to worry about. He had been lucky enough to expunge those. His Foundation was already as perfect as it could be for an F-tier.

So why did he feel so lacking?

He had experienced what it felt like to draw Legendary Genes. With a wave of his hand, he could change the life of anyone in the world. It was practically the power of a god, and it had only taken him two years to achieve it-of which he had only personally experienced less than a year.

Sylas looked up.

The army of the sixth wave began to form. But this time, he was barely five meters from their front line instead of kilometers away.

He stood there, unmoved by their spawning, and as each new orb of blue became an equally new pair of piercing eyes, the chill in the air increased and descended with greater menace. He could feel the Will of the City of Glass manifesting into a stronger and more tangible form.

Is that what Iʼm missing? Something so clear, so direct? A Dao?

[Spacetime Dao Seed (???) (Ancient Treasure)][???]—

Sylas had been studying the tree that sprouted from his Spacetime Dao Seed for a long while now. In fact, it was because of it that he had been able to successfully craft his personal path of Rune Mastery, making him the Primus Luminaria of the Milky Way Sector.

Could it be that this was what he was missing for his Foundation as well?

But even that just felt like... the beginning.

He had a so-called Perfect Spark Seed within him, but it was still called a Seed, and he still felt like he had vast pathways left to explore in Rune Mastery.

Could they not both be used for the same thing?

Pride.

The answer came to Sylas as fluidly as flowing rain.

It was what his Foundation was missing. A guiding light in the darkness, something to anchor it and give it strength.

He had so many abilities, so many paths, so many bits and pieces of unearthed potential he had yet to use.

He had two Classes, two 100 Foundation Aethers, three Comprehensions, three Professions, countless Skills, unused Gene Talents, an unexplained Race, and even more baffling family lineage on top of all of that... What they needed was a guiding principle.

A Dao-just like in the ancient times.

And for Sylas, such a thing was impossibly easy. So easy that he only had to think it.

His understanding of himself had reached perfection within the F-tier. Maybe in the future he could still change, or maybe there were deeper layers of self only higher-level beings could ever truly grasp. Or maybe you would never truly, well and completely, understand yourself and could only continue to strive for it.

But the answers to these questions didnʼt matter for now.

What did matter was that he, Sylas Grimblade, had already reached a state of perfection within the F-tier.

If he couldnʼt afford to embroil his family in a war for Demi-Godhood with his current strength, and reaching the S-Grade wasnʼt in the cards for now, then that could only mean that it was time.

The rings of gold around Sylasʼ eyes glowed bright and forceful. At the same time, his green-gold Will solidified into a band around his forehead.

Sylasʼ Will bloomed.

The Glass Commanders of the sixth wave tried to act.

All of them—all 1,000 of them-shattered in the same instant of time, falling into a rain of chunks of ice. Broken, beaten, and forgotten.

Sylas reached out a hand. The nine balls of Morphic Silver Bearings rose into the skies.

They doubled in size, and then doubled again, doubling once more on top of that.

Soon, they had grown to the size of mountains-not weighing nearly as heavy, but the difference hardly mattered at all.

With a clench of Sylasʼ fists, they fell from above like meteors.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The world shook, what formations the Glass Army tried to form or create falling by the wayside.

It was a tragedy the likes of which had never been seen before, a scope of destruction the people of Earth had once only been able to fathom by their understanding of nukes.

Yet, this power was in the hands of a single man—and worse yet, he stood amidst the destruction. As waves of snow and shattered earth fell toward him, it was like he had nothing to do with the devastation at all.

Silent and unbothered, he stood there, confident that not a single flake would touch his clothing.

And when it all settled down, he couldnʼt have been more correct.

The earth was left in tatters. Runes quickly tried to reform it as the timer ticked down toward 0 seconds for the appearance of the Seventh Wave, and yet, for the first time, the world was seeing the fallibility of the system.

No matter how quickly it worked, or how great it rushed, there was nothing it would be able to do.

When the timer hit zero, the Glass Army was spawned into a valley. They could only look up toward Sylas, who stood above them like a god amongst men.

Sylas raised a finger, and the earth around the valley trembled, burying them within.