Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2358: Interrupted Again

The first collision between Kaesha and Vaegor turned the deck beneath them into a crater.

Kaesha attacked before either twin finished laughing, her black hair exploding outward in hundreds of thick strands that hardened into hooked lashes as they crossed the distance.

Vaegor’s exposed cerebral structures pulsed at different rhythms, one tracking the hair, another reading her shoulders, another calculating the changing pressure beneath her feet, while the last seemed to react entirely on instinct as his enormous hand swept through the attack.

Most of the strands slipped around his palm.

Kaesha planted one foot against his wrist, let his own momentum throw her upward, and twisted through the air as her hair wrapped around his throat. Rather than pull away when Vaegor clawed toward her stomach, she drove herself closer, accepting the strike so she could bury a knee beneath his jaw.

His claws ripped through Beast hide and cloth.

Kaesha’s knee landed.

BOOM.

Vaegor staggered backward while Kaesha flipped over his shoulder, strips of her clothing spinning away into space. A shallow line of blood marked her side, but she didn’t so much as look down before her hair snapped taut around his neck and dragged his ten-meter frame sideways into the warship’s reinforced hull.

Vaelor moved to join him.

A legion intercepted him.

Hundreds of Draeven warriors poured across their ship in coordinated waves, their own hair lengthening into ropes, whips, blades, and layered nets that filled the space between vessels. Vaelor barreled into them with a roar, yet for all his apparent savagery, every movement carried horrifying calculation, his left hand catching a spear while the exposed brain above it had already directed his right elbow into the warrior approaching from behind.

Three attacks came from his blind spots.

He avoided all three without looking.

The secondary minds of the Vaulkyn made their fighting style difficult to overwhelm through numbers, because there was almost no true blind spot to exploit. Vaelor could punch one opponent while his hands reacted independently to two others, his feet shifting according to information his primary mind hadn’t consciously processed yet, and every time the Draeven thought they had created an opening, another part of him had already recognized it.

The Draeven adapted by becoming less rational.

A Draeven warrior willingly allowed Vaelor to seize his arm, then wrapped his hair around the ape’s fingers and screamed for the others to attack. Five more threw themselves into the opening without hesitation, sacrificing armor, flesh, and advantageous positioning merely to force Vaelor into exchanges where even his multiple minds couldn’t calculate a clean answer.

Their entire Clan fought like Kaesha.

Vaegor learned that firsthand when Kaesha charged directly into a sweeping claw that should have gutted her.

He grinned.

Then her hair moved beneath her clothing.

Strands burst from every region of her body at once, wrapping his wrist, crawling along his forearm, and tightening before the claw could reach flesh. The Draeven didn’t neglect the hair growing anywhere on their bodies because every strand was another weapon their bloodline could manipulate, which made Kaesha’s apparent disregard for grooming considerably more practical than it had first appeared.

”You disgusting little thing.” Vaegor’s grin widened.

Kaesha headbutted him hard enough to crack one of his teeth. ”That’s what you get for staring.”

”Of course I was.”

”Then die happy.”

Her hair condensed into a black spear and punched toward his exposed cranial membrane.

Two brains reacted before Vaegor himself did.

His hand intercepted the strike while his body twisted sideways, but Kaesha released the spear immediately and used the sudden slack to swing around his arm. Her heel smashed into the side of his head, sending him skidding through a section of deck plating that had been forged from materials far beyond either of their tiers.

The ships endured.

A-tier alloys buckled but refused to tear apart, formations flaring beneath every impact to prevent the battle from destroying the very platforms supporting it. Both Clans had understood the seriousness of the Heaven Clash well enough to send their young generation aboard vessels that could survive attacks far beyond C-tier, and now those ships became arenas for a fight that would have shredded ordinary worlds.

Vaegor rose laughing.

”You humans really don’t understand evolution.”

Kaesha landed with half her upper clothing hanging from one shoulder, breathing hard but smiling wider than he was. ”You’re fighting me over which one of us gets to kill another human, and somehow you still think your extra brains are helping.”

Vaegor’s veins swelled.

Across the other vessel, Vaelor heard her.

”He’s ours!”

One of the Draeven warriors drove a hair-blade across his ribs, only for Vaelor to deliberately trap it inside the wound and yank the man close enough to bite through his shoulder. ”We found Grimblade first, you hairless failures can wait your turn.”

Kaesha laughed despite Vaegor launching himself at her again. ”Your turn? You two couldn’t even decide who gets to wipe the other’s ass first.”

The next exchange became less recognizable as combat.

Kaesha’s hair wrapped around Vaegor’s arm while his claws tore across her chest, leaving a deep line that ran over one breast and sent blood spraying behind her. She ignored it completely, drove both feet into his stomach, then allowed herself to be thrown backward so the tension in her hair pulled him face-first into the deck.

Vaegor ripped free.

His cranial membranes throbbed.

The veins running across every exposed brain had swollen to nearly three times their original size, information flooding between them faster and faster as Kaesha’s willingness to injure herself continually destroyed the probabilities they predicted. She wasn’t difficult to read because she was unpredictable, she was difficult to read because she kept choosing options no sane fighter should accept.

Vaelor’s minds were beginning to suffer the same strain.

Then, somehow, both twins noticed something at once.

Kaesha followed their gazes.

The fighting slowed.

Far beyond the two battered warships, Yamero had unfolded his body back toward A-tier, his Rune-built form stretching through space as Vaelith sat behind Sylas. Sylas himself rested calmly atop the enormous Serpentes, continuing in the direction of Nosphaleen without once looking back.

Kaesha’s face went blank.

”...Where is he going?”

Vaegor stared.

Vaelor stopped with a Draeven warrior still caught in one hand.

They had spent the entire battle arguing over who would earn the right to kill Sylas Grimblade. But Sylas had simply left.

Kaesha’s gaze sharpened with fury, blood running down the claw mark across her breast as her hair writhed around her like a living storm. Beside her, both Vaulkyn twins’ exposed brains pulsed violently, swollen veins throbbing beneath membranes.

Yamero continued carrying Sylas farther away.

The compromise had worked better than Sylas expected. Yamero possessed enough speed after unfolding himself back to A-tier to keep interruptions from becoming constant, yet because his body and Will were fundamentally linked to Runes Sylas already understood, riding him barely interfered with Sylas’ senses at all.

More surprising was that Vipermancy had allowed the transformation.

It shouldn’t have.

Sylas could already feel why.

The Profession was so close to breaking beyond its existing limits that its old restrictions had begun losing meaning, and the unique paths his Contracts had forged were pushing it toward an evolution whether the system was prepared for one or not.

Sylas’ eyes shifted slightly.

Behind him, two enormous pressures and one particularly wild one began moving again.

It seemed they weren’t finished being inconvenient.