Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2485

Chapter 2485: No Survivors.

The next challenger came from the Cryst Heaven, a young Demi-God named Kethris whose crystalline Race possessed an exceptional affinity for Intelligence. His Rune Path focused on compressing Aether into increasingly smaller structures, allowing him to create formations that would ordinarily require far more space and resources than they occupied.

The first challenge was to stabilize an incomplete Rune whose internal energy had grown too concentrated for its supporting Strokes to withstand.

Kethris couldn’t have asked for a better puzzle.

He immediately began rearranging the supporting Strokes, compressing the unstable Aether into progressively smaller pockets until the pressure distributed itself evenly. His solution was excellent, and under ordinary circumstances, it would have secured him an easy victory.

Unfortunately, Sylas had been watching.

Rather than competing directly with his opponent’s Runes, Sylas allowed Kethris to finish before presenting a solution of his own. He achieved the same stability without compressing the Aether at all, instead altering the relationships between the supporting Strokes so that the excess energy no longer produced any harmful pressure.

Kethris lost, but he wasn’t particularly concerned. He had simply chosen an inferior solution, and that could be corrected.

However, when the next challenge appeared, Sylas demonstrated the same principle again, this time repairing a dying formation without needing to concentrate its remaining Aether.

By the fifth loss, Kethris was beginning to understand the implications. By the tenth, he was attempting to replicate Sylas’ methods, only to discover that he couldn’t maintain the necessary relationships without relying on compression.

What had always been his greatest strength was also the limitation preventing him from progressing.

Sylas continued challenging him until that realization became impossible to ignore.

Crack.

Kethris’ Rune Seed shattered, and his crystalline body collapsed before the Creation Tower transported him away.

—

[Challenge Complete]

[You Have Lost]

—

He never saw the message.

...

The next challenger was Elyssara of the Mesmer Heaven, a young woman belonging to a Race whose bodies existed in a state of partial illusion. Her exceptional Charisma had allowed her to develop a Fathomless Rune Creation Path that established false relationships between Runes, convincing formations to accept functions they shouldn’t ordinarily possess.

Her first challenge required her to complete a formation whose central Rune had been removed.

Elyssara excelled at such problems. Rather than creating an entirely new Rune, she altered the surrounding structure until the formation accepted another Stroke as though it were the missing component.

It was an ingenious solution, but Sylas recognized its weakness almost immediately.

When his own solution appeared, he hadn’t replaced the missing Rune either. Instead, he had redistributed its function throughout the formation, allowing the surrounding Runes to naturally produce the necessary effect without needing to deceive the Mesh of Reality.

Elyssara laughed off her first defeat, convinced that Sylas had simply stumbled upon a more elegant method.

But then the challenges continued, and Sylas repeatedly demonstrated that the effects she achieved through deception could be accomplished through legitimate relationships between Runes.

By the twentieth challenge, her laughter had disappeared.

If the functions she had spent her life learning to achieve through deception could exist without it, then what exactly was the purpose of her Rune Path?

Sylas gave her another puzzle, then another, allowing her to confront that question until she could no longer find an answer.

Her Rune Seed shattered before she could beg him to stop.

—

[Challenge Complete]

[You Have Lost]

—

She never saw the message.

...

The Sage Heaven sent Thaeris next, a four-eyed genius whose natural affinity for Mental Stats had allowed him to become one of the most promising Decoders of his generation.

His Rune Path focused on identifying the sequence through which a formation had been constructed, allowing him to reverse that process and dismantle even the most complicated structures.

The first challenge involved repairing a damaged formation, and Thaeris immediately began reconstructing the sequence of its creation to determine which portions had failed.

Sylas allowed him to work until he understood the foundation of his Path. Then he completed his own puzzle without bothering to determine the formation’s original construction sequence, instead identifying the relationships necessary for its current function and rebuilding it from there.

Thaeris frowned at the result, but the first defeat wasn’t enough to shake him.

The second was more troubling, and by the seventh, he had begun questioning how Sylas could repeatedly produce superior solutions without first understanding the original sequence of construction.

By the fifteenth, all four of his eyes had become bloodshot as he attempted to find the origin point of a Rune Sylas had completed through a circular arrangement of Strokes.

There was no meaningful beginning or end.

Thaeris understood what he was seeing, but that only made the problem worse.

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