Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1998: Only One Path [Bonus]

[Bonus chapter thanks to BobTheEngineer <3]

Keyesen’s Armor snapped into place and Deacon found himself standing before the man. When it did, Deacon almost felt as though his Will was completely crushed.

His face paled, his expression turning bleak. He had thought that when Sylas appeared, he planned on fighting himself, but Sylas had just pushed him out as though this matter had nothing at all to do with him.

If Sylas could freeze the Ancestors in place even when they thought to move against him, shouldn’t he have had every chance to destroy Keyesen with a wave of his hand? What was he doing making him fight?

Deacon couldn’t even turn around to ask. His entire focus was on the monster slowly awakening in front of him.

There was a sudden shift in the air, beams of light erupted and Deacon wanted to shift out of the way, but something held him in place.

His sword moved instead.

DENG. DENG.

The sword almost felt… clumsy in his hands, as though he hadn’t been the one who spent endless nights practicing the same motion over and over again with it.

His body… it was being controlled? How? He didn’t even feel it. His Will wasn’t even under any particular strain.

Before he could figure it out, he was already moving again. His sword appeared before the neck of the barely- awake Keyesen, slashing down.

Once again, it felt clunky, almost like he had never wielded a sword in his life. The only thing the strike had going for it was that it was strong and direct, not carrying even the slightest bit of hesitation he had had before.

But by the time it was going to slash into Keyesen’s Rune Armor, the latter seemed to finally fully awaken.

Chi.

Keyesen’s hand snapped up and caught the blade before it could slice him in two. He looked around in confusion for a moment, his eyes landing on Sylas who stood calmly to the back, and then to the sword he had caught in his claw. Only then did he finally seem to notice Deacon’s presence.

Keyesen frowned for a moment, and then his memories seemed to finally return to him.

“Madness… System…” Keyesen said slowly. And then he began to laugh. Every wave of laughter bled Deacon’s eardrums, rings of black, crimson, and gold peeling across the air as though the destruction his voice wrought came color coded.

Keyesen’s grip on the blade tightened. “I’m going to enjoy killing you. And then you afterward,” Keyesen growled, looking at Sylas for only the briefest instant before entirely ignoring him.

A controlled Greed filled his eyes as he suddenly stabbed his glaive toward Deacon’s gut.

It was over.

Deacon felt time slow around him. In those last moments, he spent his last bits of speed just to gaze at his sister one more time. He really hoped that his death could at least be a wake up call for her.

But he found that he couldn’t see her from this vantage point. There was too much going on, too many people, and maybe she had even moved.

It appeared that the frail didn’t even get to make simple requests when they neared the end.

PUCHI.

Deacon didn’t feel any pain like he should have. But when he looked down, the glaive had definitely gone right through his body.

‘What…?’

“What?” Keyesen was stunned as well. It was like Deacon’s body had become as incorporeal as light itself.

Deacon hadn’t even fully understood his own Rune Armor yet. But the Third Layer had the name of Eternal Light for a reason. In that moment, he would be absolutely immune.

But it wasn’t his fault. He was entirely unable to control such a high level skill right now.

But its creator most definitely could.

Deacon’s sword slipped through Keyesen’s claw and he suddenly accelerated back, huffing for breath as confusion filled his features. The fatigue of the continuous days of battle were getting to him, but he was huffing more out of adrenaline than anything else. He couldn’t believe what had just happened.

Thoughts couldn’t even fully form in his mind before Keyesen had appeared before him again, slashing down.

Deacon met it just as awkwardly, barely skating by death, and sometimes even suffering what should have been an immediate death several times, only for his body to react as though he hadn’t been hit at all.

Rather than becoming more skilled, though, Deacon only seemed to be getting worse and worse.

“That should work.”

The voice came from nowhere at all and yet everywhere at once.

Sylas.

All of a sudden, Deacon’s body stopped running. Runes of white gold flourished around his body, a second pair, and then a third pair of Dove Wings forming on his back.

He stomped a foot and his body accelerated so quickly he blurred even to Keyesen’s sense of Will.

Keyesen’s eyes opened wide as he barely dodged to one side, parrying the blade away from piercing him right between his brows.

However he was still stuck in that moment when a blade pierced right toward his back.

All of a sudden, it was like Deacon’s sword carried a myriad of changes, as though he had gone from a foolish layman with the weapon to an expert all experts.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Keyesen’s Greed Armor swallowed up much of the blow, half of them stopped by his glaive. But he was no longer fast enough to keep up. If not for the strength of his defenses, he would have already died.

But then he felt like his own speed had been stripped from him.

His vision blurred and it looked as though he was fighting a half dozen versions of Deacon all at once.

Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi.

The Runes swirling around Deacon only grew stronger and stronger, and all the while… Sylas never moved a single inch.

When he Willed Runes to act on his behalf, they listened.

Right this moment, Deacon’s body wasn’t his own. And as such, the only option was victory.

After all, how could he pass up a third Virtue Seed and a path to finally grasping the secret of Saliver Entrim’s Tri Class Body?