Genetic Ascension

Sylas stood in the midst of the wild carnage. He could already feel that his Will was far weaker in the outside world than it had been in the tower. But in the World Shard, he had gone back to a state where it was Infinite.

As things stood now, Sylas knew if the world was too strong, his Will would lose a great deal of its strength. But if the world was weak enough for him to impose his Will onto it, then he would be able to return to his true state.

As such, his Will was oscillating between Infinite and “normal.”

It seemed as though Infinite Will was a completely new tier of Will separate from Marked. That was to say that his Will was both Marked and Infinite at the same time; the two weren’t mutually exclusive, although Infinite took precedent in the Title.

Even when his Infinite Will was toggled off, though, his Marked Will was easily tens of times stronger than it had been before he got his Infinite Will, and now that it was at near full strength, it was displaying its might.

A new obelisk formed before him, towering even greater than before.

‘Good.”

The moment it completed its transformation, shards of a blue-tinted iron hovered around it as though countless ring formations. Sylas was able to confirm one very important thing.

He could use this obelisk to reach the very extremities of a B-Grade Race.

Although this wasn’t as good as reaching A-Grade as he had hoped, it was still better than the alternative. There had been a very real possibility that he would only gain a single Race Grade boost from all of this hassle.

The limit of the Genesis Forge had been D-Grade before, and given how rare it was to have such a boost in the first place, only being able to progress to a C-Grade Race after this wouldn’t be all too shocking.

Now the only question was…

How long would it take?

It had taken Sylas months to reach D-Grade before. He had only been able to temper himself once a day, and he had needed a pretty strong Aether Treasure just to sustain the energy the obelisk needed.

The Thryskai Feather he had been using before would still work, but it honestly wasn’t nearly good enough. While it did come from a D-tier of the Thryskai, and was the feather of a Demi-God that should be from an A-Grade Race, it was too limited still.

It was a good thing, then, that Sylas had an obnoxious amount of wealth right now, including more rewards than he even really knew what to do with.

Sylas took out one of them. This was one of the few final rewards he got from the tower. It was unfortunate he hadn’t been able to clear as many of the territories as he wanted because he thought speed was of the essence to ensure he got his hands on the Reaper Sealwright Profession.

If he had known that the second Progenitor was a Sloth Disciple who was too lazy to clear territories on his own and just followed after the opening he had left, Sylas would have just stopped at every territory, clearing every reward the system held in store for him.

Unfortunately…

[Tower of Champions][Access Denied. You have already been crowned Champion] Sylas remembered seeing the message and shaking his head.

Although he had no intention of joining again right this moment as Earth needed his help, he would have liked to know that he could come back after those matters were resolved. Unfortunately, it seemed that he couldn’t.

Sylas didn’t believe that this was only because he was crowned Champion either. If you didn’t need a perfect run the one time you could enter, he doubted that these people would spend so long waiting and filtering out weaker Races to stop them from dragging them down.

Shaking his head again, Sylas threw the orb up. There’d come a day when he’d make the Sloth pay for wasting his opportunity like this. While he couldn’t kill that living cockroach now, he didn’t believe he would still be so limited in the future.

The orb exploded with light, a large amount of Aether pooling out in all directions.

The Thryskai Feather that held it all together began to give off radiance of its own, absorbing this Aether greedily.

This orb was an interesting Aether Treasure. It was similar to the Wheel of Fortune in that it helped one build their Foundation. It was said that using it could aid one to build their perfect Foundation in a single go.

Meaning, if you reached Level 50, rather than grinding away to fuse all of your Genes, Titles, and various other skills to your Foundation, this orb could do it for you in a single go—and perfectly at that.

It could save some people years of effort.

For Sylas, who had so many things to purify into his Foundation, it would have certainly been a great help. Such a thing could probably instantly double his strength right now. But Sylas was against using it.

The orb was essentially help from the system to build your Foundation. If Sylas could help it, he would like to rely on the system as little as necessary. He was more aware than an F-tier should be that relying on the system only meant that he would never surpass the one who built it.

But more importantly than that, building his Foundation was a chance to comprehend the layers of his body more—something that would be invaluable in the future and even to his current Rune Mastery.

Not to mention the fact he felt he would be able to do far better than this orb could.

In that case, using the orb for its shocking amount of energy was the far better play. BOOM.

It only took a single breath and an even shorter instant of time.

Sylas felt his Race break through into the C-Grade.

it was as expected. Being a Primus Imperium with the ability to absorb E-Grade resources into his body meant that not only could he absorb F-Grade Genes he was too limited to in the past… but his Race refinement in the F-tier would also be far faster.

His body was in too perfect a primed state to accept evolution.

Under normal circumstances, it would take him probably years to reach B-Grade. By his calculations, exactly 17 years.

But now?

“A few weeks should be enough.’