Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2440: Dormant

Sylas looked at Two without changing expression, the same deadpan calm remaining on his face even as Weaving Madness lowered itself toward Slithering. Two had expected anger, calculation, perhaps even the first traces of concern, but what he found in those emerald eyes made his own gaze pause for the first time.

Sylas was looking at him like he was an idiot.

Two had seen disdain before and had certainly inspired more than his fair share of hatred, but this was different. Sylas wasn’t posturing or attempting to provoke him. He genuinely seemed to believe Two had overlooked something so obvious that explaining it would be a waste of time.

The answer came before Two could ask.

Sylas’ Lust Seed pulsed, its Virtue spreading through the technological connection the Omnimous had already helped him understand. Weaving Madness froze before it could attack Slithering, its eight metallic legs digging into Hell as the machinery controlling its body suddenly found itself competing with an authority far more intimately connected to what remained beneath all that metal.

Two’s eyes sharpened.

He had understood how Sylas seized Scurrying quickly enough. The true Virtue of Greed and the heart of the original Scorpion gave him an absurdly convenient bridge into the cyborg’s technology, but Two had already accounted for the possibility that Sylas possessed another Seed.

The chance had been small enough that it barely deserved consideration, but Two considered everything. If Sylas possessed a second, Gluttony had been the obvious possibility, especially when Slithering Madness had gone out of its way to contact him personally.

Lust hadn’t entered the equation.

More importantly, Two hadn’t expected Sylas to possess the genuine Virtue.

The mechanical structures buried inside Weaving Madness resisted as Two’s commands attempted to reassert themselves, but Sylas didn’t need to dominate them for long. Lust rolled through the cyborg spider’s remaining flesh, touched the Will beneath the machinery, and broke the balance Two had created between the two.

Weaving Madness screamed.

The sound carried none of the hatred Scurrying had directed toward Sylas. The moment Two’s control broke, the spider twisted toward the Professor instead, its eight legs blurring as webs of Will spread between them and turned the surrounding Hell into something sticky enough that even Two’s red telekinetic arms slowed.

Sylas immediately released his control over her. There was no reason to waste energy commanding something that already wanted the same person dead.

The burden on Sylas dropped at once, allowing him to focus almost entirely on Scurrying while Slithering and Weaving acted independently. Three Arcane Madnesses crashed against Two from separate directions, Greed stripping strength from the world, Gluttony increasing the weight of every attack, and Lust binding the spaces between his telekinetic defenses until the red arms protecting him began breaking one after another.

Two retreated.

Yet Sylas still didn’t feel as though they were winning.

The Professor still answered every attack with the same infuriating simplicity, red Will condensing into palms and fists wherever necessary before disappearing the instant their purpose was fulfilled. Even when Scurrying’s claws tore through one arm and Slithering crushed three more beneath its body, Two simply replaced them without any obvious strain.

Something about him was changing, though.

The dullness in his eyes began disappearing.

At first it was little more than an added sharpness as he followed the three Madnesses, but with every exchange the light grew stronger until his eyes burned beneath the hood like two torches. His posture straightened, his movements became less perfunctory, and the retreat that should have frustrated him seemed to accomplish the opposite.

Two grinned, a spread of jagged white widening beneath his cloak until it could be seen through the darkness.

It spread wider with every passing second until his expression carried an excitement Sylas recognized far more easily than fear. This was the first time since arriving that Two looked as though the blood in his veins had begun moving properly.

A wet sound came from beneath his hood as something unfolded from his mouth.

A tongue extended several meters into the air, though calling it a tongue was generous. Pieces of living flesh had been cut into segments and joined together by tiny metallic hinges, allowing the grotesque thing to bend in directions no natural muscle should have managed while several mechanical joints clicked along its length.

”Oh, this is wonderful.” Two’s tongue curled around his shoulder as his grin widened. ”I haven’t wanted to cut someone open this badly in a very long time.”

His red Will exploded outward, dozens of arms becoming hundreds as the pressure around him finally began climbing in earnest. Weaving’s webs tore, Scurrying was driven several kilometers backward, and even Slithering’s enormous body bent beneath a pair of palms that pressed against its head and spine.

”Two Seeds.” Two’s glowing eyes remained fixed on Sylas. ”I need to see it. Your organs, your Will Core, every layer of your Genes. What did your body change to allow two authorities to coexist without eating one another alive?”

Sylas listened without any visible reaction while Fanelei and Cheri continued feeding power through his back. If anything, Two’s sudden enthusiasm made the conclusion easier to reach. To be excited about such a thing...

Sylas’ disdain only grew deeper. Since he felt that way about two...

Sylas would show him a third.

Pride flourished.

The change was quieter than Greed or Lust, but its presence swallowed both beneath an authority so natural to Sylas that separating one from the other had long since become pointless. Two’s grin froze as the third Virtue manifested.

Far deeper within Hell, something stirred.

Sylas felt it through the Seed, faint enough that someone else might have dismissed it, but he had encountered that Will too many times to make such a mistake. He had once concluded that he was ninety-nine percent certain the Monkey King was dead, and at the time that had been the most confidence the evidence allowed.

Now, that missing percent had an answer.

Sylas’ thoughts shifted immediately toward the Omnimous floating above his palm, and then toward Old Brama, the Golden Grove, the Golden Battlefield, and the absurdly elaborate loop the Monkey King had built across time just to kill him.

Of all the places in existence for an inheritance capable of perfectly countering Two’s technology to appear, it had landed in the hands of an elder belonging to the very organization the Monkey King’s plans had already sunk their roots into.

Sylas didn’t believe in coincidences that convenient.

Deep within Hell, the dormant presence of Pride opened its eyes.