Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1265: Beneath

So that was what Sylas did.

The tree had 777 unique Time Runes and 777 unique Spatial Runes. Sylas wasn’t sure why the numbers were so exact, or if this was just the exact limit that the sapling had right now. But he committed to learning them all.

Many of them overlapped, having the same—or abilities so similar that they almost weren’t worth drawing a new Rune for—but Sylas didn’t discriminate in the slightest. In fact, he sought out ones like that.

Runes that had the same function and yet crafted them through vastly different means were the best for establishing his foundation. The concepts from their similarities helped him to learn them faster while also deepening the understanding of the one that came before.

He came across countless shield-type Space Runes. Ones that compressed space into a solid sheet, ones that used distance to force an attack to lose its momentum, ones that used space to divert attacks to other regions, some that used spatial pockets to swallow up large amounts of energy in a single go and have it explode in another dimension…

And these were just the distinctly different types. Within them, there seemed to be just as numerous a number of ways to complete the same action.

For compression types, you could fold space, or you could make it heavy using a more gravity-like approach—though that seemed to encroach on some aspects of Time—or you could bend space to the point that an attack quite literally twisted in on itself, disrupting its Runes and shattering it to pieces before it could even reach its attacker in the first place.

Once again, these were just defensive types… amongst the other Space Runes, there were still those that could be used for attack, those that could be used for movement, and still yet those that could be used on an auxiliary basis.

Movement Runes that shrank the ground with every step, that brought two unrelated points together, that could even completely convert momentum, allowing one to stop on a dime or transfer all of their speed to the swing of a weapon.

Auxiliary Runes that could multiply attacks, transfer a blow meant to land in one location to another, or create distortions in space that could disorient one’s senses, or even use space to create a clone of oneself.

The last one was particularly interesting, it was just that since it was space-related, the number of clones he created would function with an equally divided portion of his strength…

Unless he, of course, used some other spatial abilities to compensate for that.

The attack Runes of space, however… were seemingly where it truly shone.

Just the simplest blade could seemingly cut through anything. Even Sylas’ Constitution was shredded to pieces by a blade formed of a 10 Foundation Space Rune.

The way space attacked was simply different from any other Aether Sylas had ever seen. While other Aethers ate at defenses before doing internal damage, space split those defenses apart, creating severing lines in reality where they simply didn’t exist.

Sylas had read many depictions of space in fiction or seen them in many movies. But it wasn’t until it was in his hands that he truly felt the shock of it.

Unless one had Aether or Will powerful enough to disrupt his control over the Mesh of Reality around them, a single spatial blade of this weak Rune could kill them.

And yet, that was exactly that. A weak Rune.

There were attacks that could shred a person’s body to pieces, compressive attacks that could shrink their bodies into gaps in space that would turn them to minced meat, dimensional attacks that could swallow their limbs or heads into completely different pieces of the world, or you could even do the opposite of compressing—expanding sections of them until they imploded.

And this was all before Sylas even got to the Time Runes.

The Time Runes felt no less expansive, and yet their abilities overlapped even more than the Space Runes did. It felt like there wasn’t anything as tangible with the Time Runes.

There was nothing here that could rapidly age a person to the point of death, maybe because these Runes were far too weak to do such a thing. Time Runes needed to scale first before they could display such power.

However, what they could do, even on a limited scale, was no less shocking—especially if matched with Chrono Casting.

Time Runes could make attacks echo and multiply even more effectively than Space Runes could. He could use them to slow people down or speed himself up, crafting minor shifts in temporal perception whether to dilate or shrink.

These Runes were especially effective on himself. And if he used them in this way, they were even more powerful.

He could reverse wounds that weren’t caused by Aether too powerful for the Rune to handle. He could displace himself through time, returning to a location he had been in moments before as a method of teleportation that was far more difficult to detect and stop than normal spatial teleportation. There was even a method here of speeding up his thoughts just enough so he could leap to a deduction he could have made given a few extra seconds.

Meaning… he could deduce the future through his own thoughts and perceptions. Although this was even more flawed than a future that could be changed normally, it was a shocking ability nonetheless.

The more Sylas learned, the more Runes he brought to Soul Mastery—some even faintly beyond—the more he realized why affinities for Time and Space were so rare…

Even in this lower threshold, they were powerful enough to be shocking. In the hands of someone who could use them as cleverly and effectively as himself, he felt that calculating an accurate Combat Matrix Index for him would be impossible.

What he did know was that the moment he got to the last Runes—even before he returned to the beginning to attempt to forge his first 100% Mastery Runes…

He had already surpassed the best F-tier Rune Master of this generation.

He and Furon Leava had yet to meet, but…

The latter was already beneath his notice.