Chapter 2458: Which One? [Bonus]

[Bonus thanks to RikStingRay <3]

Xarvenya’s fingers finally loosened from the fabric gathered in her palm.

She had held herself still through the entire tribulation, even when Sylas had been reduced to little more than blackened bone and fragments of a skull, because there had been nothing she could do from where she stood.

Now the pressure covering the Milky Way was gone, the white-gold lightning had vanished with it, and the hole Sylas had torn through the ceiling remained open above them as proof that she could finally breathe.

Nosphaleen’s reaction came faster. A brilliant smile spread across her face, and the warmth that followed surprised even her. She had believed Sylas would find a way through, or at least told herself that enough times that she believed it, but watching him actually tear Judgment apart with his own hands still felt good in a way that was impossible to describe.

Just because she believed in Sylas whole heartedly, didn’t mean that she liked watching him suffer. And the cruelty he was put through this time was worse than just suffering. He had been dragged through hell.

"Fuck yeah!"

Nosphaleen turned toward Cassarae, her smile somehow growing wider.

"You didn’t believe enough."

Cassarae looked at her as though she had just been personally insulted.

"Your little twinkle toes were all knotted up. Who do you think you’re fooling here?"

Nosphaleen’s lips parted before laughter escaped her, and Cassarae’s glare lasted only until she started smiling too. Neither seemed interested in pretending that the last several minutes hadn’t scared years off their lives now that Sylas was standing on the other side of it.

Xarvenya watched them banter, and a rare smile spread across her lips. It seemed her husband really was a man capable of doing the impossible.

She had lived long enough to understand how dangerous that phrase was. Every generation produced geniuses who believed themselves exceptions, and every few generations one of them might even prove it for a time, but a tribulation was something else entirely. The very word had become a sentence to death across the ages.

How many generations had it been since someone had cleared one?

A pressure unlike Judgment spread across the Plane, vast enough that all three women looked upward at once. There was no hostility in it, only an authority so complete that resistance was impossible.

—

[Perfect Plane-Wide Notification]

[The Grimblade Clan has established the foundation of an Eighth Seat of Power within the Skai Heaven.]

[A God Clan has awakened.]

—

The smile disappeared from Xarvenya’s face.

Cassarae slowly lowered her arms, while the warmth in Nosphaleen’s expression sharpened into focus.

**

Hell had already lost several landscapes to the battle.

Mountains that had survived epochs were now molten depressions, rivers of fire had been redirected across entire regions, and enormous fractures stretched through the ground where the Monkey King’s staff had met Two’s hands. Neither cared much for the destruction, and Hell itself seemed sturdy enough to take far more.

Then the notification appeared.

Two stopped with one hand raised before him, the remnants of force around his palm fading before they could finish crushing the space between them. Across from him, the Monkey King rested his staff against one shoulder, and for several long moments neither made the slightest movement.

The humor drained out of both men.

Two read the notification once, then again, his gaze remaining on the words long after there was anything left to understand.

"Do you think One was as lackadaisical as Five?"

The Monkey King’s eyes remained forward.

"I don’t know. I’ve never met One before."

Two’s expression slowly shifted, a grin pulling at his lips as he looked away from the announcement.

"You were responsible for sparking that flame within Five."

The Monkey King said nothing. His thumb brushed once across the side of his staff, and the silence stretched until the fires below had begun filling several of the craters their battle had created.

"... Maybe."

Two laughed beneath his breath.

"Five woke me up a bit too."

Two’s grin remained, but there was something more awake behind his eyes now than there had been when their battle began.

"Don’t you think it’s curious that all of us are so sure the multiverse would be too boring if we fully woke up?" He tilted his head. "Which one of us is correct, do you think?"

The Monkey King looked over. There was no hesitation in his expression. The answer was so obvious that giving voice to it would have been redundant.

Two stared at him for half a second before his laughter exploded across Hell.

"You say this, and yet of us all, you have lost the most."

The Monkey King rolled the staff from one shoulder to the other.

"Losses just make the win that comes after more satisfying. Isn’t it better to crush people who think they’ve won?"

Two’s laughter stopped, though the grin remained.

Then both disappeared.

Their collision swallowed the notification behind another eruption of Hell.

**

Sylas stared at the announcement for a long while.

His attention eventually shifted past it, rising toward the pillar of light that had pierced through the heavens themselves. It descended far beyond the Mortal Plane and stretched upward toward heights even his current senses could not properly measure, connecting layers of the Skai Heaven that had spent countless years separated from one another.

He studied it without speaking, his thoughts moving through possibilities faster than he cared to settle on any one of them yet.

Then his gaze lowered.

Vipermancy opened before him.

—

[Profession Evolution Complete]

[Vipermancer: Silver → Legendary]

[Profession Level Synchronized]

—

[One Kind For Me]

[Level: 200]

[Experience: MAX/MAX]

[Path Talent: Beast Totem Lv200; Insight Lv200]

[Beast Totem (Path Talent)]

[>Suppress <C-Rank> Serpentes Beasts by <100%>]

[>All <C-Rank> Serpentes obey your commands]

[>Suppress <B-Rank> Serpentes Beasts by <50%> and ignore Rank Suppression]

[>Forms Hibernation Realm mirror <B-Rank> Serpentes True World]

[>Hibernation Halo]

[>Fusion is instant]

[>Buff <D-Rank> Contracts by <10,000%> and <C-Rank> Contracts by <200%>]

[>Ancestral Gravity]

[>Contract Echo]

[>Apex Imposition (NEW!!!)]

[Insight (Path Talent)]

[>Comprehend Gene Sequence of Contract]

[>Sense Evolution Triggers]

[>Comprehend Contract]

[>Sense nearby Paths]

[>Myriad Intuition] (EVOLVED!!!)

[>Semi-Reversal]

[>Echo Fuse]

[>Redo]

[>Lock]

[>Forced Divergence]

[>Self-Made Myth (NEW!!!)]

—

[Were-for-the-Invincible]

[Level: 200]

[Experience: MAX/MAX]

[Path Talent: Fuse Lv200]

[Fuse (Path Talent)]

[>Fuse with your Contract and gain <400%> of their stats]

[>Fuse with <50> <D-Rank> Contracts and <10> <C-Rank> Contracts at a time]

[>Fusion process is immediate]

[>Fusion lasts as long as Will of Contract or Beast Master does]

[>Semi-Fusion]

[>Reverse Fusion]

[>Forced Fusion]

[>Total Will Merge] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Overdrive]

[>Override]

[>Mythic Fusion (NEW!!!)]

[>Will Hierarchy (NEW!!!)]

—

[Taboo Bond]

[Level: 200]

[Experience: MAX/MAX]

[Path Talent: Causal Extricate Lv200 (EVOLVED!!!); Bond Lv200]

[Causal Extricate (Path Talent)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Genes] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Gene Talents] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Blood Essence] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Bone Essence] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Comprehensions] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Soul Constructs] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Will Manifestation] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Will Core] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Extricate <C-Rank Legendary> Race Quintessence] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Rank Limit increase by one Tier if target is a Serpentes] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[Bond (Path Talent)]

[>Bond <C-Rank Legendary> Free Chaos] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Bond <C-Rank Legendary> Potential] (EVOLVED!!!)]

[>Rank Limit increase by one Tier if target is a Serpentes] (EVOLVED!!!)]

—