Genetic Ascension

Sylas stood in the midst of rotating balls of violet energy, his expression unreadable as he scanned through one Stroke after another. The dense confusion in his mind remained heavy.

This was already his third day standing here, and it could be said that the difficulty he was facing was not small. He almost felt like he had made little to no progress at all.

In the end, there was a difference between the Secret Realm’s challenge and what he was trying to do here.

In the Secret Realm, he was moving around templates of Runes that already existed, morphing and changing them based on a subtle understanding of them.

But here, he was trying to construct his own Runes. Not just that, but a mesh of them, formed of a complicated net of interlocking E-Grade Runes. The difficulty was orders of magnitude beyond.

For the F-Grade, there were ten foundational Strokes he had to learn. For the E-Grade, there were ten thousand. Worse than that, the F-Grade had a total of ten thousand Foundations that formed it, while the E-Grade Warlord Armor had ten million.

The gap was astronomical, and there was no doubt that the gap to the D-Grade would only be all the more ridiculous.

Even if you had the skill as an F-tier to draw all of this, you wouldn’t have the Mental stats necessary to keep up and manage so many Strokes, Foundations, and Runes at the same time.

The moment Sylas started studying it all, he realized that even if he managed to learn all of this, the idea of drawing this in the middle of battle… there was simply no way.

There is another way…

Recalling the past, when Sylas first came across the Armor, it was in the hands of a member of the Ravenclaw family, and they had drawn it into their skin to use it like this.

This was what those who had Mastery weaker than Breath Mastery were forced to do, otherwise they would have to personally supply the Runes with Aether themselves.

It had to be remembered that only when a Rune was drawn to Breath Mastery would it be able to draw Aether to itself and be self-sustaining. Lower than that, and you would require external treasures to supplement it and give it strength and life.

The higher the Mastery a Rune was drawn to, the more Aether it would be able to pull to itself, the closer to perfection it would be, and the stronger its imposing result would be as well.

When Sylas first saw this sea of Strokes and the complex mesh of E-Grade Runes and Foundations he would have to learn, he thought that maybe he should just take advantage of the resources he had gained through these battles to make his own personal E-Grade Armor into a series of tattoos he drew onto himself.

He should be able to withstand it with enough external materials to supplement it all. But he wasn’t sure if the Scorned Wraps would register it as a treasure or not.

But then… he thought of something else.

His F-Grade Emerald Scorpion Warlord Armor.

His own Armor and this one were actually different. That was part of the problem with deviating onto his own path so early on. But… was it as much of a problem as he thought?

Right now, Sylas’ Emerald Scorpion Warlord Armor could only be said to be absolutely ridiculous.

Not only could he manifest it instantly after absorbing the Emerald Scorpion Warlord Gene, but it could display over 10,000,000 additional Physical stat points.

That sort of foundational strength was actually more powerful than any E-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor Sylas was capable of drawing right now. If he managed to draw the E-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor to Breath Mastery, he might get around 1,000,000 additional Physical stat points.

Of course, these were Earth stats. Meaning, in this system, it would be 10,000 and 1,000 respectively.

This sounded a bit low for an E-Grade Armor, but it had to be remembered that Sylas’ Emerald Scorpion Warlord Armor could only display a might so great because he had integrated with its Gene. This caused there to be a 10x increase in the strength the Armor provided. And that was given the fact Sylas had mutated it and drawn it to 100% Mastery.

Read on lig‌ht‌no‌‌vel‌world‌.o‌rg

The million additional Physical stat points the E-Grade could give was only at Breath Mastery and without the Gene absorption. Meaning, even if you only drew the E-Grade Scorpion Warlord Rune to just 40% Mastery, you could directly absorb the Gene and have an Armor equally as powerful as an F-Grade Armor drawn to 100% Mastery by a Perfect Spark Master.

This was the gap between Tiers.

That should also go to show just how much more room an E-Grade Warlord Armor had to grow too.

The real reason Sylas was trying to learn it now wasn’t because he felt it would be a great assist to his strength—because it wouldn’t, not yet, at least. It was because he wanted to understand it now so that he could master it more quickly in the future.

The sooner he started, the better.

However, it was clear after these three days that things wouldn’t be so simple… which was why after the first hour or so, Sylas had already changed his approach.

At this current pace, if he wanted to slowly master every Stroke to at least Breath Mastery, and then further beyond that comprehend the Foundations, before finally the Runes, he would need at least a year.

If he used Andromeda, he felt that about a month would probably be enough, though he was quickly running into the limitations of how much smarter Andromeda made him.

This was too slow in Sylas’ opinion.

On the one hand, he now wanted to stay in F-tier for as long as possible to maximize his Primus Imperium Title, which would inevitably disappear once he entered the E-tier.

But on the other… if he spent too long on one thing, he wouldn’t be maximizing it, now would he?

That was when Sylas came up with a solution to his plights.

Why did everyone always chase after strong foundations? Why did he want a powerful Legendary Foundation instead of a Gold Foundation that already didn’t exist in this Sector to begin with?

The stronger the foundation, the taller and faster you could build. It was simple logic.

So why wasn’t he taking advantage of his foundation?

The key to drawing his E-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor faster…

Was his F-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor.