Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2453

Chapter 2453: Heaven’s Answer. (4) [Bonus]

[Bonus thanks to TheHonoredOne69 <3]

The humanoid hovered above the devastated continent without a single thread of lightning escaping its body, and that absence made the power packed inside it feel even more severe.

The storm that had covered hundreds of kilometers had been compressed beneath a smooth pale-gold surface threaded with violet, every spark, every roaring current, and every scrap of destructive Will forced into a frame only slightly larger than Sylas himself.

Nothing leaked from it because there was nothing loose enough to leak. The surrounding atmosphere bent away from its limbs in shallow depressions, and whenever one of its fingers shifted, the clouds nearby shuddered as though the movement had displaced something far heavier than flesh.

Sylas stared up from the ruins while Selfwrought Emperor continued laying wet fibers of muscle over his exposed ribs. He had survived the lightning, dissected its Runes, upgraded his Progenitor Flame, and reduced a strike capable of swallowing a mountain range into pieces his body could endure, only for the tribulation to take everything left and condense it into something that could fight him.

A grin slowly spread across his face until his teeth showed.

"Good."

The Ruby Ouroboros stirred at his call, and Sylas reached through their Contract with a familiarity that needed none of the careful exploration of the past. Semi-Fusion took hold as [Bloodburn] flowed into him, and the reconstruction crawling across his bones stopped so abruptly that the fresh tissue hanging from his chest remained unfinished.

Pain intensified as the choice settled.

Bloodburn didn’t heal damage. It consumed the causality of the healing Sylas refused to take, reaching toward the future where his wounds closed and stealing the strength that would have carried him there, and there was scarcely a better body for the Skill to exploit than the one lying broken across the earth now.

What little blood remained inside Sylas began to burn.

The heat wasn’t anything like the lightning. It came from within his vessels and marrow, corrosion moving through him until fresh muscle blackened and peeled away from bone, but every piece of himself he surrendered returned as a violent uprising of Physical might.

His grin remained and black bones lifted from the crater.

A film of emerald spread over them as Dragon scales formed without wasting substance on the flesh that should have supported them, coating Sylas’ skeleton in a thin crystalline sheen. Behind him, his Phoenix wings returned in another shape entirely, great structures of emerald crystal unfolding from his back until fractured light spilled through hundreds of translucent facets.

His Progenitor Flame burned at its limit while Temporal Delay and Astral Stutter overlapped, stretching his perception through Time while his awareness sank into the changes impressed across Space. The Runeweaver structures inside his eyes vanished beneath weaving emerald flames, their rotations moving too quickly to distinguish as individual layers.

Sylas raised his remaining hand.

Life and Death appeared together.

The two Seals rotated across his palm before elongating in opposite directions, one forming the living foundation of the weapon while the other hollowed out everything that didn’t belong. A black shaft extended between Sylas’ fingers, followed by a curved edge so thin that the space touching it seemed unwilling to remain whole, and the Grim Blade settled into his grasp.

The humanoid moved.

One moment it hung beneath the clouds and the next its fist occupied Sylas’ vision, a sheath of condensed lightning covering its knuckles while the Will inside the strike pressed down with a judgment that felt larger than the body delivering it. Sylas caught the first layers through Temporal Delay, Runeweaver flames stripping apart the construction around the fist before his scythe rose to meet it.

The collision launched him upward.

Sylas’ bones screamed beneath the force as cracks raced through his emerald coating, but he used the momentum rather than resisting it, crystalline Phoenix wings spreading as he shot thousands of meters higher. The humanoid followed without needing wings of its own, the heavens seeming to pull it upward before another palm descended.

This strike carried more than lightning.

The sky above Sylas darkened as though the entire atmosphere had acquired weight, a Judgment of Will locking onto him while condensed currents formed across the humanoid’s palm in concentric layers. His Runeweaver Eyes caught the Foundations constructing that pressure, unraveled the outermost chains, and the Death Seal running through his scythe bit into what remained.

The attack separated rather than vanished. Two rivers of pale-gold lightning passed around Sylas while the center collapsed beneath the Grim Blade, but enough force survived to crack three ribs and drive a spike of pain through the remains of his chest. Bloodburn took the damage greedily, the possibility of healing those ribs disappearing as another swell of power entered Sylas’ frame.

He rose again.

Their next exchange happened above the clouds.

The humanoid kicked, and the movement dragged a crescent of lightning behind its leg dense enough to leave a dark wound through the cloud layer below. Sylas twisted past the center, lost part of one crystal wing to the edge of the strike, then swept his scythe across the humanoid’s ribs after his eyes tore open a narrow flaw between two interlocking Runes.

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