Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1840: An Example [Bonus]

Sylas didn't move, he didn't celebrate, he didn't gloat. He wasn't one to do anything of the sort anyway. But right now, he didn't feel the need to.

Especially since he could feel something... something odd.

It was like a Will, but it was processing. Processing faster than should be possible, and adapting to a larger scope, a wider lens.

Sylas could feel it. Like he was under a microscope, pressed down between two glass pieces and squeezed thin until all his insides were perfectly laid out.

And then a light shone right through him. Forceful, purposeful, elucidating what might be left, or maybe just what remained.

It was a feeling more uncomfortable than any he had ever experienced, and one that he couldn't seem to rip himself free from. Even when he expanded the scope of his Progenitor status, even when he truly allowed himself to feel the width and breadth of the Milky Way for the first time truly... down to its countless stars and the rivers of its scattered inhabitable planets.

It wasn't enough.

Xalor's body shook and he straightened. The golden roads that descended from the skies broadened their width and solidified once again, the cracks that had formed across them becoming vein patterns of new gold even brighter than the last before these veins cannibalized what remained until what was left was a road even brighter than the first.

And then Xalor's body began to glow, cobwebs of gold extending from the hole in his back until it was patched and began to seal up on itself.

All the while, Sylas did nothing. He stood there as though he couldn't feel the probing and prodding, like he couldn't feel the cold steel edge filleting his skin open, the prongs sliding behind his eyeballs and peeling his eyelids back, the tube that slid down his mouth through the whole of his body.

It was all an illusion. None of what he was feeling could actually be seen. But it was an illusion that blended into reality, as though the higher-dimensional beings doing all of this were playing with the limits on what was and wasn't allowed.

But Sylas didn't give them a reaction. He didn't even move.

It was like he and Xalor had swapped places, the latter moving freely while he was the one frozen in time.

The flames in Xalor's eyes seemed to return and he locked gazes with Sylas. It was something that should have burned Sylas' irises away, and yet the flames that sparked along them seemed to be wicked off of them.

Xalor pulled his sword back and raised his blade, a new decree taking shape in the skies.

"The crimes of Sylas Grimblade have been elevated to the most severe decree. In response, the only appropriate punishment is of the highest order.

"Gene Erasure."

Xalor's sword trembled, the skies split beneath its mere presence.

Crackling lightning, arcing in strands of bronze, took shape across his great sword as though he was truly commanding judgment.

But the power didn't seem to come from Xalor himself. It was like the words Gene Erasure alone had summoned the lightning, as though the curse of the words themselves was enough to agitate the universe.

The lightning strands looked less like condensed bolts of electricity and more like fissures and cracks in the fundamental reality... The chaotic mess of what was left after what was once whole shattered.

It was a reaction fitting of the words.

The moment they were heard, the Emperor Sanctum itself seemed to be cast into an inevitable state of destruction.

If a Gene Lock was meant to protect one from their Genes being taken from them or formed by another, then a Gene Erasure wiped clean from the world everything having to do with a person, never to allow them to rise again.

However, the problem was that Sylas wasn't just a Grimblade. He was the Monkey King. He was a disciple of the Scorpions. He had the Genes of the Great Apes and potentially even the First Race of Earth in his body.

And Xalor meant to erase all of those.

Chi.

The sword descended.

What was left of Sylas' raised arm spurted with blood. It peered so bright even in all the light, the Runes within it digitizing as though Sylas was still being scanned, still being dissected.

But nothing was more stark than the sudden change.

In one moment, it had seemed like Sylas was on top of the world, as though everything had already come to a satisfying close and the people of Earth could finally exhale a breath of relief.

But in the next...

Isolde found herself covering her mouth, wanting to peel her eyes away and yet being unable to bring herself to. What kind of mother would she be if she couldn't make it through, if she couldn't at least watch what her son was experiencing in real time?

Magnus and Cedric could only stand with blank looks on their faces. Their hearts had been filled with such pride just moments ago. That was their son, their grandson, who stood at the pinnacle, who protected Earth from intruders and aliens alike, from those that deigned to use this world as the garbage disposal for their careless dreams and abyssal desires.

Cassarae stood in silence, her mind as blank as the faces of her father and grandfather-in-law. Honestly speaking, she couldn't seem to recall having ever seen Sylas struggle with anything. She wouldn't even know how to picture it if it came to be necessary.

Even now, her mind seemed to form a blind spot where he positioned, her thoughts furiously erasing any attempt at making sense of what she was seeing as though to wipe it clean in real time.

But then the sword descended again and Sylas lost another arm.

He still wasn't moving. He still couldn't seem to move at all. No... he still wasn't being allowed to move.

He was frozen there, the world watching as he was dissected piece by piece... as he was made an example of.