Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2274: Shroud

Cheriʼs pupils constricted. Sylas was planning to be far more aggressive than she thought he was going to be. He wasnʼt even going to wait, and he certainly didnʼt seem like he was going to be taking any chances.

Not with the lives of his parents.

This blindfolding aspect of these petty games was exactly why Sylas was so worried. Maybe if they werenʼt like this, Sylas could try and trust his parents. After all, they were his parents. They had raised him. He knew exactly how competent they were.

And though he wasnʼt intimately familiar with their strength, the fact they reached Spark Mastery with some enlightenment suggested that they had already been looking at the world around them properly.

They had all the resources they could ever want at their fingertips with him leading things. His sister had managed to somehow sneak off to the Demi-God plane on her own, so he didnʼt believe his parents would be truly defenseless.

But in a world like this, you only had one life. And if you had power…

It should be used.

Cheri grit her teeth so hard they nearly cracked under the pressure. Then she made a decision.

She quickly stood from where Sylas had just laid her down and hurried to his side, grabbing his arm. However, she wasnʼt taking action to slow him down.

On the contrary, she looked like she was going with him.

Sylas gave her a glance and Cheri looked up at him, her eyes flickering with focus.

”I will be helpful,” her voice streamed into his ears. Normally, she wouldnʼt be so confident that her voice wouldnʼt be overheard even with this method. But Sylas was like a black hole. If anyone tried to listen in on their conversation, they would probably hear nothing at all.

Sylas didnʼt say anything, but he also didnʼt look convinced.

He was trying to pretend to be someone as powerful as a God. What was having a C-tier on his arm going to do for that? If anything, the fact he had chosen Cheri of all people would dampen the effects he wanted. The only reason he had taken her this far was because he didnʼt exactly have another choice.

Cheriʼs existence was what allowed him to sit in the lookout, mostly, without reproach. If he just showed up alone, it would have caused a lot more chaos, and he might not have made it to this point.

Having her wouldnʼt help. Unless…

Cheriʼs clothing shifted and changed. Soon, a new pair of robes appeared on her.

Her legs became covered in heavy plate armor as though a knight, as did her arms. Her hands, rather than being covered in gauntlets, were covered in unique gloves that had little metal shingles that flexed and moved with the joints of her fingers.

Her robes were unique, having short sleeves and ending with a sway at her knees. But they had an aura to them that was half scholarly and half almost… royal.

On her chest, an emblem that Sylas was sure he had never seen and yet felt like he had seen everywhere he looked was emblazoned onto her proud chest.

Despite the fact this was the first time Sylas was seeing it… he was absolutely sure.

Especially when he laid eyes on the bronze trimmings that outlined it.

Legacy. This was a uniform of Legacy.

”Mm.” Sylas nodded, understanding what Cheri wanted to do. Then, he raised a foot, pressed it onto the banister of the lookout, and then leapt out.

In their wake, the wide eyes of the elite disciples they left behind followed them with a searing heat.

Cheri was… a Bronze of Legacy?

The realization made their hearts shudder. Joining Legacy was incredibly difficult. Over 99% of the people who even tried failed.

Situations like Earth where they would just pop in and select their talents one by one were rare because Summoned Worlds, in general, were rare. Finding them before they matured was even rarer.

But even then, as talented as Earth was, they only took an impossibly small fraction.

Their small population could be proven with just a single thought exercise…

As many times as Sylas had pissed Legacy off and bucked against their interests…

Just how many of their members had he actually run across?

He could count them on a single hand if he ignored those recruited on Earth.

Yet, Sylas never really cared. It wasnʼt until now that he understood the level of weight a ranked talent of Legacy had. If even a Bronze had this much weight to them… if Cheri was truly a Gold talent, how would they have reacted had she not hidden her abilities?

Sylas walked across the skies with a slow, unbothered gait. The wind might as well have been a solid piece of land beneath his feet, his calm air intoxicating to the masses.

Sylasʼ senses swept out as the newbie disciples streamed out of their respective portals and onto the center arena. He didnʼt spot his parents at all, but he realized instantly that that was because their appearances were being shrouded and hidden.

It sounded as though they were only attacking the senses of the candidates themselves, but it seemed that that wasnʼt the case.

Unfortunately for them…

Sylas stepped down to the land below and appeared in front of a woman who stood tall. There was a sternness on her face that Sylas had seen too infrequently in his life. In fact, the last time he had seen it was when he had nearly killed a boy back in high school.

His mother too rarely used that face, and he didnʼt want her to have to. Still, it glinted like a sharp blade in the night, a part of her that wasnʼt just a mother, but the business woman who had helped his father build their comfortable life once.

Sylas reached a finger forward and tapped her forehead.

Chi.

The shroud over her eyes and ears shattered.