Genetic Ascension

It was true that this would change everything. It was true that this City Stele could take their Sector’s branch and skyrocket them into another stratosphere.

But there were problems. Too many problems.

For one, this City Stele would only work for as long as Sylas was Primus Imperium. Once he advanced to E-tier, it was over. If he died, it was over. If he even thought of running away, it was over.

But that was fine. Even only being able to use a Legendary City Stele in the short term, if they could pump it full of resources, it would change the whole trajectory of their futures.

In fact, the fact this was likely temporary would also help them. After all, if they had a permanent Legendary City Stele… it would almost feel like a waste.

If the City Stele was too powerful for the Sector, it would just be wasted potential. Eventually, they would just be using too much effort to upgrade the City Stele for minimal results back.

City Steles were based on percentage boosts a lot of the time, and if the world around you was pitiful, then the gains wouldn’t be worth it.

Plus, the challenges one had to face to upgrade a Legendary City Stele were also enough to give the strongest warriors night terrors.

But then there was the biggest issue.

Wasn’t the target on Sylas’ back already ridiculous enough? Once this news—no, this news was already as good as out now. There were too many eyes here, and too many people would want to buy information about the punishment levied at Sylas Grimblade’s wife.

Forgetting third parties that might want to interfere, just the moment any of the other Thryskai Sectors caught wind of a Legendary City Stele appearing here, they would immediately take action to wipe it out with their full-force approach.

They wouldn’t even have to target the City. Who didn’t know how much Luck and power a Legendary City Stele had revolving around it? Just the Nexus one could access would probably be enough to bring the greatest tycoons of the Sector to their knees.

All they would have to do was throw so many challenges at Sylas that he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

If Sylas was truly the Primus Dominus like they all thought, was he truly just so arrogant that he believed he didn’t need food, sleep, or rest?

These confusing swirls of thought left them suffocating on their own breaths, not sure what this meant or where this was going.

It was maybe one of the most simple psychological tricks in the book, and yet it was extremely difficult to get to the point where you could use them.

Sylas had gone from unknown to having a towering reputation so grand there wasn’t a single C-tier that hadn’t seen his face or heard of his name in the entire Sector.

Soon, this would likely be true of adjacent Sectors as well.

He was the Primus Luminaria, the Primus Imperium, and also heavily speculated to be the Primus Dominus as he was the only one who could possibly have secretly stolen such a Contested Title under everyone’s noses.

And it was precisely because of that everyone wanted to monitor his actions, to rethink and mull over everything he did, said, or acted upon.

And while they were confused about what his true intentions were, trying to figure out what sort of master plan a Primus Dominus could be brewing… Sylas himself was actually quite calm, his thoughts only known to him, and yet not a single one of them was spared toward them.

**

Sylas sat on a familiar mountain range, staring out into the distance. He seemed to be relaxing for the first time in a long while, but judging by the flicker in his eyes and the sharpness of his aura, that was clearly far from the case.

He seemed to be calculating something, but in action he was still ruminating on the E-Grade Scorpion Warlord Armor and how to make it better.

The feeling was quite odd for him. Somehow, he felt like he was already an E-Grade Spark Master, but he didn’t have nearly the same fluidity he did with F-Grade Runes. It didn’t feel like Spark Mastery… it felt empty, vapid, even.

‘This should be the weakness of relying on the system to bolster my control. It’s possible… but…’

Sylas reached out a hand, drawing an E-Grade Rune and feeling disgusted all the while. These weren’t up to his standards, and the cognitive dissonance was throwing him off.

‘Then my path will be the right one,’ Sylas confirmed to himself.

There was a flicker in Sylas’ eyes as sparks of Emerald rampaged, smashing into the world around him and crumbling it all to ash.

An enormous crater was eaten out of the side of the mountain, leaving Sylas sitting there in silence.

It was easy to use his new Title to chase after strength in the E-tier. But in Sylas’ opinion… that would be foolish.

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What if instead of doing that, he instead focused on using his ability to leap into E-tier strength to unearth more potential in the F-tier?

If his body could supposedly withstand E-tier Genes now, then how many F-tier ones could he take on instead? He bet that he could already swallow Legendary F-tier Genes because of all the space he had in his body now… He just needed to find them.

That spark of Glassvolt Aether just now—that was the product of his perfect 100 Foundation Glassvolt Rune. He had felt light-years away from reforging his Aether into this path, but now it felt almost… too easy.

His Aether now was so much more powerful than before that the Effectiveness of the Intelligence stat he could access was simply off the charts.

That was what he would use Primus Imperium for.

If he used it the way most would, he would just end up breaking into the E-tier and losing the Title.

But… if he completely ignored most of the E-Grade items he could swallow, using the space for F-Grade things instead, then his Foundation would become so shocking that when he did evolve into an E-tier, he would instantly become nearly untouchable. At that point, he would be even closer to earning his Primus Imperium Title once again.

That said, he wouldn’t ignore the E-tier completely, of course. After all… now that he could cast E-Grade Runes, he could start studying them ahead of time.

If he wanted to get rid of this cognitive dissonance he was facing, rather than trying to continue acting like a Spark Master, he would just start from square one once more.

If he could make it to Spark Mastery once… he could certainly do it again.

And once he could draw E-Grade Runes to Breath Mastery fast enough to use them in battle, his power would surely take an enormous leap forward.

The current Combat Matrix Index of F-tiers would just look like a joke in front of him. Though… it already was.

Even if one just accounted for Sylas’ Rune Armor stack alone, he had Furon beat by 20x.

Sylas looked up and caught sight of Gralith walking through the skies, slowly descending.

“The Bat Lineage has called a meeting. They are levying complaints about Vaernon’s death and your true Tier.”

Sylas nodded. They were still playing obvious moves. Even now, they were underestimating him.

Well… he would take advantage, crushing their momentum so thoroughly that by the time they realized they should have brought heavy artillery, it would already be over.