Genetic Ascension

To say the battlefield was shaken would have been an understatement.

It was difficult to put into words what they had just witnessed, because it felt less like an army had been slaughtered and more like the fate and fury of the Mesmeryx had been erased before their eyes. Whether Beast Heaven eventually won the Heavens Clash or not, there was no recovering what had just happened here, and all Sylas had needed was a wave of his hand followed by a single word.

Just what level of Rune Mastery was this?

The formation he had created seemed to ignore the usual separation between tiers and levels, manipulating Blood Essence, Genes, Runes, and Will as though the distinctions between them barely mattered. More frightening than even that was the sheer breadth of Sylas’ Will, because from the perspective of everyone watching, it felt as though there was simply nothing it couldn’t reach and nothing it couldn’t command.

Sylas hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Below, Iskaleth unleashed a roar as her tail forced the dark Serpentes out of another fold of void, and this time she didn’t allow him to disappear again. Her jaws snapped around his neck and tore away a massive chunk of flesh, forcing the creature’s true body to manifest as a surprisingly small Serpentes that twisted violently in the open air.

Without the protection of the void around it, distant starlight began eating into its scales almost immediately, its body withering with every passing second.

Vaelith stood beside Sylas with her eyes wide, while Yamero found the corner of his mouth twitching despite himself.

When he first met Sylas, he had been quite confident in his own Rune Mastery, but watching tens of thousands of Mesmeryx die beneath a formation Sylas had constructed almost casually made that confidence feel increasingly difficult to justify. This didn’t feel like the Rune Mastery of a mortal anymore, but something approaching the maw of a God snap down.

Technically, Yamero could recognize Fathomless Rune Mastery within it, but there was another underlying sentiment he couldn’t quite grasp. More importantly, the Will supporting everything felt far too complete, possessing a presence that even True Infinite Will shouldn’t have been able to display so effortlessly.

Infinite Will could spread without end, but spreading still required time, because all the discussions of finite and truly infinite infinities meant little if that infinity hadn’t yet propagated far enough to matter.

Eternal Will didn’t have that flaw.

By definition, it had always existed and would always exist, which meant there was no need for it to spread outward or establish its presence before acting. It simply was, and seeing that distinction expressed so boldly for the first time caused something within Yamero to churn as the layered Runes of his body shifted subtly against one another.

Sylas didn’t notice, or perhaps he simply didn’t care to acknowledge it yet.

His gaze remained on the falling Mesmeryx corpses as fear spread through the battlefield, because tens of thousands of their finest had been wiped away before their furious roars could even finish echoing through the skies. Most warriors here hadn’t known Selythra’s identity, but they knew what the Mesmeryx represented, they knew the strength of a Gold Grade Beast and the foundation granted by a superior Heaven.

And yet, one word had killed them.

That fear wasn’t limited to Beast Heaven.

From the distance, Xiburn Elyssadra had been rushing toward Sylas’ location from the moment he sensed the sudden shift in the battlefield, his enormous halberd held across one shoulder as his wings drove him forward. Now those wings slowed without his permission, the slit of his third eye widening as his horns seemed to frame an expression Vaelith had never seen on him before.

Fear.

His grip tightened around the halberd, but his body no longer carried the same eagerness that had sent him diving from the Elyssadra warship earlier. Sylas turned his head as though he had felt the stare from across the battlefield, and the moment their gazes met, Xiburn stopped completely.

Vaelith smiled bitterly.

She had known Xiburn for almost her entire life, and very few people were bold enough to call her ice princess directly to her face the way he did. She had seen him challenge people stronger than himself without hesitation and throw himself into situations others would avoid, yet right now it didn’t even seem as though he possessed the Will to continue forward.

Then another roar rolled through the battlefield.

Dry Mouth opened his jaws and inhaled.

The crimson flames Rathyr had spread across the battlefield were pulled toward him in spiraling streams, disappearing down his throat as his eyes brightened with sudden understanding. He had sensed the lingering void woven through Sylas’ attack, and for the first time he understood that the void wasn’t merely the nothingness separating all things, it was also the bridge between them.

If he used it as that bridge, then distance stopped mattering in the same way.

A Will that lacked the strength or energy to stretch across a vast gap could instead pass through the void, because there was nothing there to steal from it and nothing there to weaken it.

How could something lose strength to nothingness? And if laws ceased to exist within that nothingness, then only the points where those laws became active again truly mattered.

It was a cheat among cheats.

That principle made Sylas’ already absurd Eternal Will even more terrifying, but Dry Mouth was the first of the three Contracts to seize something from it this time. He roared as the flames filling his belly changed, their crimson color drowning beneath a spiraling blackness before exploding from his jaws.

Rathyr’s eyes widened.

The black flames swallowed him.

Dry Mouth felt something settle inside his Will as the attack closed around the Cindermaw Serpentes, and his understanding became clearer with every scream that followed. If the void was a bridge, then he would become its gatekeeper, deciding what crossed and what remained trapped between one side and the other.

Nothing would pass without his permission.

And whatever he swallowed before breathing it back out...

He would erase it, along with the one who owned it.

Rathyr’s scream twisted into something horrific before cutting off completely, his ruby scales, flames, and body disappearing into the blackness until nothing remained.

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