Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2434

Chapter 2434: Open Air

Caelum was beginning to lose control, and Sylas noticed it first in his eyes rather than his Runes. The mechanical pieces still moved with precision, but the flesh surrounding them had gone bloodshot, thin red veins spreading farther with every pulse of Greed that rolled out from the open doors.

His formations were changing with him. What had once been clean, efficient applications of Time and Order were becoming heavier and more aggressive, wasting power to crush anything that approached instead of solving the problem with the smallest possible expenditure.

The Greed was getting to him.

Caelum seemed to understand that much, but understanding did little when the pressure continued growing. His Fragmented Infinite Will resisted better than almost anyone else’s would have, yet every time something slipped beyond his control, that resistance twisted into a stronger need to seize it back, feeding the very influence he was attempting to suppress.

The five Fallen Madness Disciples were experiencing the opposite effect. Their bodies continued strengthening beneath the resonance, their Wills fitting together more cleanly with every passing breath until what had once felt like five incomplete forms of Greed was beginning to approach something disturbingly whole.

Sylas folded Space around one of them and redirected its charge into another, but even that impact only slowed them for a moment. Their strength had already risen enough that his Spacetime Runes required noticeably more force to contain them, and Caelum’s B-tier Heaven Runes were beginning to suffer the same problem.

Sylas’ attention returned to the cyborg behind the doors.

There was still something wrong with the picture. If Legacy’s purpose had always been to replicate Greed, there was no reason to build a prison around the creature that had apparently succeeded in becoming its modern representative.

The doors themselves were too deliberate for that. Technology and Hell Runes had been woven together through every layer of their construction, while the chains piercing the cyborg’s body were clearly designed around the exact Will now spilling across the region.

That meant the structure wasn’t helping create Scurrying Madness. It was restraining it.

The realization shifted everything else into place. The five Fallen Madness Disciples carried incomplete versions of Rat’s Will, while the creature behind the doors carried a perfect match and possessed the heart of the Scorpion that had originally represented Greed.

A prison built around a stolen position.

Sylas’ eyes narrowed as the final gap in his understanding disappeared. Whatever Professor stood behind this had trapped Scurrying Madness beneath a specific expression of Greed, then built the restrictions around recognizing and suppressing that exact form.

That created an obvious problem for the creature inside.

If Scurrying Madness simply became stronger while remaining the same, the prison would grow better at identifying it rather than worse. It could overpower the restraints eventually, perhaps, but whoever designed this place had clearly intended to prevent that path from ever becoming practical.

So Scurrying had searched for another one and the five Fallen Madness Disciples were the answer.

Different people carried different Wills, different histories, and different interpretations of Greed, but every one of them was approaching something close to the same destination. Scurrying Madness had been producing variations of itself, searching for an expression that remained close enough to Greed to matter while differing enough from its own Will to evade the restrictions binding it.

The symmetry wasn’t lost on Sylas. The Professor appeared to be attempting to reproduce Greed from the outside, while Scurrying Madness was doing almost the exact same thing from inside its prison for an entirely different reason.

That also explained why Caelum mattered.

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