Genetic Ascension

Sylas plummeted, his speed picking up at a rate much faster than gravity should have allowed. Though his eyes narrowed, there wasn’t another change to his expression.

He didn’t believe that this Dungeon would act so unilaterally when he hadn’t done anything wrong. In addition, he hadn’t noticed the other participants do anything out of order.

The only difference between him being in the bubble and out of it was the fact that all five spheres of green had been filled the instant he fell. Which meant that this change was triggered not by something being enraged, or by some action, but instead because the number of participants had been fulfilled. Which meant…

This was the trigger for the start of the Dungeon.

Sylas had only just completed his thoughts when his feet nearly crumbled out from under him. He slammed heavily into an invisible ground he couldn’t pick out in the darkness, his knees wobbling.

He managed to catch himself with his telekinesis before he fell further and injured himself more, but now he couldn’t help but frown.

What was this? It didn’t make any sense.

He thought he was being brought somewhere, but he was just dropped onto the ground? What was it testing just now?

Sylas looked up and found that he could see the spheres clearly, but the others were looking down, trying to find him. It was obvious that they couldn’t pick him out in the darkness. There was no source of light down here other than Sylas’s eyes alone, and their visualizations weren’t stretching out far enough to reach him.

Danger flickered a warning in the back of Sylas’ mind. He moved on instinct, shifting out of the way before he could be touched.

A swiping claw of something green flashed for a moment, but it missed by what must have easily been an entire meter. Sylas reacted so fast that it wasn’t even close.

Sylas’ steps came to a pause, and he raised an eyebrow.

The level cap for this Dungeon was Level 50, but it didn’t seem to be particularly strong. In this sort of Versus Dungeon, if they didn’t fight directly, Sylas very much doubted that there would be a threat here for him.

But that fall just now… it made him wary. There was definitely something odd about it.

That wasn’t to say that he thought someone was messing with the Dungeon. As far as he knew, that wasn’t possible, at least not for the powers involved right now.

Instead, that fall had almost hurt him. That was the main problem.

Sylas in the past would have easily glossed over this—it wasn’t too big of a deal. There were a lot of things that could hurt him.

But the Sylas of now was very different. That fall seemed to be just at his limits, such that he could react to it in time—but had his reflexes been just the slightest bit worse, he could be lying on the ground with two broken legs right about now.

It was contradictory. How could a Dungeon be both easy, and capable of catching him off guard at the same time?

‘…Interesting…’

Sylas’ hand suddenly snapped out and caught the next flash of green that came for him, his claws clamping down on the blade’s flat sides and causing sparks to fly.

He squeezed down so hard that cracks appeared in it, but it wasn’t enough to shatter the blade completely. Not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t want to.

‘The physical power is about… three or four thousand or so. It’s powerful, but not enough to deal with the likes of us. Will it grow stronger?’

The gap between the first and the second wasn’t enough for Sylas to have a solid idea.

His claws squeezed down more and shattered the emerald energy to pieces. However, just when he thought that another would come, the shattered light wrapped him up in a sphere and he hovered within it once again.

With a pop, another fell from above. This time, it was Jala.

Sylas found that he instantly became like the others, unable to see with any sort of clarity what was happening. He could only wait until Jala, too, was wrapped by the sphere of green again. Only then did he become visible once more and another fell from above, and then another.

Thalrik and Zoryx were the most caught off guard by the fall, the two very nearly breaking their legs. However, they reacted to the blades far more easily than Jala did. The latter simply tanked them, the blade shattering against his armor and forming the sphere around his body a moment later.

Sylas found himself observing Jala far more than anyone else. Within his memory, of course he recognized the young man. But it was his treasures and his method of using them that intrigued Sylas the most.

Of course, Sylas knew just how important powerful treasures were. He knew that as he stepped out into the universe, the fact he couldn’t use them would only become more and more of a detriment.

But the more he observed Jala, the more he felt that the latter was playing a very curious game. He wasn’t displaying his real abilities at all.

Sylas read him like an open book.

Jala certainly wasn’t as powerful as Israeal, but he wasn’t as incompetent as he was making himself seem either. But he was insistent on hiding the full extent of the mechanisms his treasures were capable of.

That made Sylas wonder. Was he being too cautious? Or was there a method to Jala’s madness?

If Jala could have taken out Israeal, why not cut down their competition by one? Especially since Israeal seemed to be the other wild card here.

Sylas didn’t know who Israeal was, but he had a guess he was 90% assured in. And if he was correct, the person he most wanted to kill right now was this Thryskai.

There was something particularly brazen about Sylas’ gaze. He calmly took in everyone around him, analyzing every little detail.

Until two bubbles popped at once, and he found himself falling alongside Jala.