Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2298

Sylas looked down at Sarethvane.

There wasn't much left to look at. Sarethvane lay sprawled across the wreckage of his own coffins, the stone split and scattered around him, black Will bleeding off his frame in threads that ended in shattered edges. The irony was that his injuries weren't even caused by Sylas. Sylas hadn't landed a single hit. If anything, Sylas had saved him in the end.

It was Sarethvane's own arrogance that caused him to compress his body like he had.

But even so, Sylas didn't move to claim him either.

There was a difference between a Serpentes who had been beaten and a Serpentes who had been broken, and the second one was worth nothing to him at all.

He was looking for a method to break free of the system, to shatter the ceiling. He didn't need contracts who were vacant shells of their former selves after a loss.

He had built Gogo back up once. It had taken time and it had taken patience, and even then, it had only worked because Gogo was a Basilisk King. That lineage towered over anything a grave-crawling Serpentes could dream of claiming.

A Bloodline like that had a floor. No matter how far Gogo fell, there was always something waiting to catch him, something older than his own confidence.

Plus… at the time Sylas didn't exactly have any other choice but to take Gogo on. Gogo was his first contract and everything Sylas did at the time relied on the system. He hadn't known any other way.

Gogo had grown into the role of his little brother, but Sarethvane was nothing to him now. Why should he give him the same treatment?

Sarethvane's baseline talent was unremarkable. His race wasn't anything worth mentioning, honestly. If you stripped away the Will he had stolen from the dead, the cleverness that taught him how to hold it, and the drive that allowed him to trudge forward to this point, what remained wouldn't be able to look any decent Demi-God in the Eye.

There was a reason his Race or Clan wasn't that of an Overlord Race.

So Sylas stood in the dark above the ruined cemetery, his hands in his pockets, simply observing.

…

Sarethvane looked up.

His body wasn't the problem. His chest was cracked, his mouth was full of blood, and none of his bones were in the right place, but they could heal. Flesh could come back together, bone could mend, his mind, however….

He reached inward, trying to find some strength, not because he truly wanted to fight back, but out of mere habit. He didn't know any other way to live life.

His strength didn't answer him the way it always had. The Wills came back fragmented and broken, they didn't respond to him in the same way. In fact, they seemed to treat him as one of their own, a broken piece of what once was… a dead Will.

His strength sat there in pieces and no matter how many times he scooped at it, trying to pick it up, it failed horribly every time.

That was when a voice echoed in his mind.

Sarethvane couldn't tell where it came from. It was simply there and everywhere at once. It surfaced inside his skull like it had always been there, and maybe it had been… ever since he saw that notification… or maybe ever since the very first Quicktime Event that God had triggered… "Weak."

Sarethvane's eyes went still.

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