Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2435

Chapter 2435: Genuine

Caelum’s condition was deteriorating faster than Sylas expected, the red spreading through his eyes until even the flesh surrounding the mechanical portions looked inflamed.

His golden formations still carried B-tier strength, but the precision behind them had begun slipping, every response growing heavier and more wasteful as Greed continuously pressed against his Will.

Even his use of Time had changed, no longer selecting the smallest possible interval necessary to accomplish something when twisting a much larger section of the battlefield would achieve the same result.

Sylas noticed the difference after Caelum reversed one of his movements for the third time. The first two uses had been precise enough to affect little more than Sylas himself, but this one caught several meters of broken obsidian along with him, briefly restoring shattered pieces of the battlefield to where they had been several exchanges earlier before the effect collapsed.

Caelum had gained strength since devouring the five Fallen Madness Disciples, but Greed was making him careless with that strength.

That made the black cylinder considerably easier to take.

Sylas had kept track of it since Caelum first released the five failures, along with everywhere Caelum had stood while handling it. There was no reason to reach for the device directly when Caelum was watching it closely enough to react, especially when the man had already shown Sylas that he was willing to distort increasingly large sections of Time just to prevent him from gaining anything.

Sylas shifted backward beneath another golden formation, allowing the edge of it to catch his shoulder before folding Space and appearing several dozen meters to the side. Caelum followed without hesitation, his domain expanding ahead of him as another temporal formation formed, while Sylas continued giving ground in a path that looked considerably less deliberate than it was.

Three exchanges later, Sylas stopped.

Caelum didn’t notice where.

There was no reason he should have. The battlefield had already been torn apart several times over, and they had crossed this section long enough ago that even a normal person with an excellent memory would have struggled to distinguish one stretch of black stone from another.

Sylas remembered exactly what had happened here. Caelum had stood in this position while opening the cylinder just moments earlier.

A loose emerald Stroke formed beside Sylas and shot toward the device in the distance.

Caelum reacted immediately and Time twisted.

Sylas felt the formation spread far wider than it needed to, Greed pushing Caelum toward the most forceful answer rather than the most efficient one. The surrounding battlefield lurched backward through its previous states as broken stone climbed from the ground, displaced Aether returned along old paths, and the cylinder itself was caught within the backflow.

That was what Sylas had been waiting for.

He didn’t resist the temporal reversal. Instead, he adjusted his position by less than half a step as the cylinder retraced the history Caelum had forced upon it, moving backward through the moments since it had been opened.

For a fraction of a second, the device occupied the exact point in space where Caelum had once held it.

Except Caelum wasn’t standing there anymore.

Sylas was.

His fingers closed around the cylinder as though it had simply appeared in his palm.

Caelum’s temporal formation collapsed a moment later, the battlefield snapping back toward the present while the device remained in Sylas’ grasp. The red in Caelum’s eyes seemed to deepen as he finally understood what Sylas had done: there had been no attempt to overpower his Time Rune Creation at all.

Sylas had simply decided where Caelum would send the cylinder.

"Give it back."

Sylas ignored him and turned more of his attention toward the device, allowing several loose Spacetime Strokes to occupy Caelum in his place. The cylinder was considerably more interesting from this distance because, while Runes were certainly integrated into its architecture, they weren’t the true foundation holding everything together.

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