Genetic Ascension

Sylas' eyes narrowed as he stared into the darkness beneath the nebula, but for several moments he didn't move, and neither did the ancient eyes looking back at him from within that compressed pocket of void.

He would have recognized those eyes anywhere, which made the situation stranger rather than clearer, because even after everything he had experienced, Sylas had still never received a proper explanation for how Gogo had ended up where he first found him.

Gogo was the only one of his Contracts he had discovered inside a Dungeon, not even a Field Dungeon, and somehow the boss of that Dungeon had managed to leave with him alive.

That had never made much sense, especially when Sylas considered what Gogo actually was.

If the creatures within Dungeons were created by the system in a manner similar to the spawned existences produced by various City Steles, then the explanation might ultimately come down to Will, and a Fate Dragon certainly possessed enough of that.

All it would need to do was leak out enough of itself for the system to interpret, then allow that Will to be used as a blueprint to reconstruct a body that could exist outside the place it was hiding.

From there, much of what came afterward became easier to understand. Gogo's Will had been strangely fragile when Sylas first met him, and his Pride had been even weaker, a contradiction for a Serpentes carrying such a lofty Legendary Lineage, but perhaps that weakness had been intentional.

The Fate Dragon had been hiding from the universe itself, and if it wanted to survive without the Clan that had created it, whatever fragment of itself entered the outside world would have needed to lower its head first.

The universe believed in Dragons. Near every Living Will in existence carried some concept of their might, whether through fear, reverence, myth, ambition, or the endless stories that placed them at the pinnacle, and any Dead Will that stood against that collective understanding would be crushed beneath it.

Sylas could almost imagine the relationship like antimatter meeting matter, the Fate Dragon's claim colliding with the accumulated Will of the universe until whichever side possessed less weight was simply erased.

If the Fate Dragon wanted to survive, then, its safest option was to send out something small enough that the universe wouldn't bother crushing it. A weak fragment could bow its head, live, grow, gather weight, then perhaps follow a Quest or some other path that slowly rebuilt the authority it had once possessed until it could return and stare out from the void with those same ancient eyes.

The possibility was so audacious that Sylas couldn't stop the grin spreading across his face.

With a thought, he summoned Gogo.

The enormous black Serpentes appeared beside him, his body snaking across the void while the horns rising from his head looked prouder than Sylas remembered.

Gogo turned toward the Fate Dragon without any visible surprise, and that single reaction told Sylas almost as much as any answer might have.

"So, Gogo," Sylas spoke, his grin deepening. "You've been using me all this time, is that it?"

Gogo didn't respond.

That silence had always been one of the stranger parts of him. Of all Sylas' Contracts, Gogo was probably the most intelligent, and yet he was also the only one who had never spoken a single word, something Sylas had always dismissed as a product of age because Gogo was still technically a child by the standards of his Race.

Looking at him now, Sylas wondered whether that had ever been true, or whether Gogo had simply chosen silence because there had never been a reason to reveal more.

Gogo's tail suddenly swept forward.

Sylas didn't react because the strike wasn't aimed at him, and in the next instant the Fate Dragon split cleanly in two beneath the blow. Gogo inhaled immediately afterward, drawing one half of that ancient existence into his maw without hesitation, as though he had known exactly what he intended to do from the moment he appeared.

There was no eruption of power afterward, no explosive transformation, and not even the smallest visible change to Gogo's body. The only thing that changed was the Contract between them, which shattered so abruptly that Sylas felt the absence before he fully processed what had happened. One instant Gogo was still bound to him through Vipermancy, and the next there was nothing at all.

Gogo opened his mouth.

"I am going to go and steal my wife now. Fifty years is too long, anyway."

The voice that came out was deep, ancient, and rumbling enough to make the surrounding void tremble, yet there was a strange carefreeness underneath all that weight, touched by a depth of Greed Sylas hadn't expected, though perhaps he should have.

Gogo had remained silent all this time, only to finally speak when he was about to leave, and the first thing he chose to announce didn't have anything to do with their own relationship at all.

His tail swayed once, and then his body shot upward.

Within moments, Gogo's black form had already reached the very edge of Sylas' senses, moving so quickly that even his current perception struggled to keep hold of him.

A tear toward the God Realm ripped open ahead, and Gogo passed through without another word, leaving Sylas standing before the remaining half of the Fate Dragon as the wound in reality slowly began to close.

Sylas didn't stop him.

He didn't call after him either, and even when the tear completely vanished, taking Gogo beyond his senses, the grin on Sylas' face remained. After all that time, all the protection, growth, and opportunities Gogo had received under him, those few words had been the only farewell he thought necessary.

"How interesting."

Sylas lowered his gaze toward the remaining half of the Fate Dragon, his expression settling back into calm amusement as another thought passed through him. Gogo had still made one mistake, because if all he wanted was to become stronger than Dragons, Sylas could have brought him there eventually.

But if Gogo wanted to become the new ceiling itself, then that was something entirely different.

That wasn't a throne Sylas could simply give him.

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