Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1764: Swallow [Bonus]

Germaine took a breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, there was a sharpness that hadnʼt been there before. For the first time since Sylas met her, she looked like an actual C-tier for once.

Not that it made much of a difference.

”Thereʼs a reason thereʼs a separation between the normal members of Legacy and the Professors. When you become a Professor, you cross over a line of humanity you canʼt get back. The change starts here. I will say it one more time. There is no going back.

”Just seeing it is enough to change everything. This isnʼt something that you can take a glance at and then just decide you donʼt want to deal with it anymore. You have to make the choice now.”

Sylas didnʼt reply, but he also didnʼt seem to be impatient. He listened to Germaine despite the fact she wasnʼt saying what he had clearly asked to hear.

He knew that she was telling the truth.

He had only seen two Professors in the past, but even if both of them were insane, there was no reason for them to be the same sort of insane. Why would they all seemingly forget their humanity?

Neither seemed to be tied down to a single Race any longer, willing to do whatever it took to become greater.

But while the sentiment itself was noble, there was something particularly sad about forgetting the origin of who you were so completely and wholly.

There was a very clever thought experiment of philosophy that posited a simple question: At what point did a repaired ship become a new ship? Was it when you changed the sail? Maybe the mast? Maybe after you had swapped out 50% of the original wood? 60%? 70%?

Was it a factor of time? If it took you 100 years of slow repairs until none of the original ship remained, could you still call it the original ship? What if you did all the same repairs instantly?

In a lot of ways, being able to play a game of Jenga with your own genes and the layers of your body was exactly this thought experiment.

One might think that so long as your Will remained the same, it was all fine. But in this world... even your Will itself could be changed.

So, the question remained, just the slightest bit tweaked:

At what point did an evolving humanoid become an entirely different person?

Was Germaine the same person she had once been? Did she cross over after the strap-on? Maybe the spider leg? Or was it her hair, or the fake breasts?

Or had she become a different person the moment she made the choice to change in the first place?

Sylas suddenly smiled. It was a sight that made Germaineʼs pupils constrict into pinholes.

”Show me,” Sylas said.

There was only one thing that he could think of that could make Germaine react so solemnly, but just the mere fact that this of all things made Sylas smile collapsed the last shred of resistance Germaine had in her heart.

This wasnʼt a man she could go against. There would only be one result should she ever decide to do such a thing: Her death.

Germaineʼs jaw unhinged and her neck snapped back. The sound of something grotesque and somewhat mechanical gurgled, and the slightest arc of something so very familiar to Sylas shot through the air.

Crimson lightning.

Germaine screamed, cracks of red appearing across her skin. She was clearly withstanding a great amount of pain, the mere action of trying to tap into this energy rending apart something deep within her.

However, Sylas didnʼt so much as flinch. It seemed that he was correct.

There was really only one thing that could make people as wild as the Professors forge such an existential dread as the foundation of their remarkably existence.

The ceiling of the universe.

Germaine collapsed, heaving for breath. Something was pressed into her palm, a piece of something that looked like a fragment.

ʼHm?ʼ

Sylasʼ gaze flickered. Although he only saw a small piece of it, he recognized that material.

Cassaraeʼs sword was made of it.

Considering he had spent little to no effort on secondary professions, this wasnʼt something that someone with Sylasʼ background should be able to point out. But Sylas might not have had foundational knowledge he had something far more important than that.

His senses and his Rune Mastery. More specifically, Seeing Weaver.

His ability to break down things into their fundamental Runes and see through their intricacies was on a completely different level now.

Germaine coughed and pulled herself up slowly, her body trembling. It took every bit of energy in her body to slowly push the fragment in her hand further.

”Quickly,” she said. ”Brace yourself.”

Sylas reached forward and plucked it out of her hands.

Germaine gasped with relief, but only in part. It seemed that the fragment even being in the room made her feel like the world was coming to an end. But when she finally had the wherewithal to check on Sylas, she froze.

Sylas just stood there, staring at the fragment in his palm with the very same cool indifference. Veins of red grew along his hand, and even down his forearm, but they couldnʼt seem to make it much further than that.

The cracks essentially seemed controlled.

”What am I supposed to do with this?” Sylas asked.

Normally, he didnʼt ask such things. But even after staring at the fragment for a while, nothing was happening.

Germaineʼs bottom lip trembled as she tried to speak, but no words came out.

”Sw... swall... you can...”

Her mind seemed to have shattered. She didnʼt understand what she was seeing at all.

Sylas spun the shard on the tip of his finger. Swallow? No, that seemed quite inefficient. Even if he used Primal Gut, there was no way he could digest something like this. And why would swallowing this help him to learn faster?

No. What it really did was destabilize the layers in his body, increasing his ability to manipulate them. The Professorsʼ special method was probably related to how they suppressed the pain and restrained this shard from wreaking havoc.

This shard basically did exactly what the Scorned Wraps did, except... while the Scorned Wraps broke the rules of the system, this shard broke the rules of the universe itself.