Genetic Ascension

Sylas’ eyes narrowed. He didn’t expect the Hollow Wing to improve this quickly. A new Talent every five levels meant it would have ten Talents by the time it was finished. Would all of them be as broken as these?

A part of him couldn’t help but wonder how much of this was due to the other pieces he used, versus how much was because of the Seeing Thorn.

The Seeing Thorn was a B Grade Race. And all things considered, its existence was probably the most potent of all the materials Sylas used. Whether it was the Frostbane Feather, the Symbiote, or even the Bone-Tailed Lizard and Glasirith, it was hard to say if they were as valuable.

And Sylas was right to think this.

The Seeing Thorn produced not just thousands, but millions upon millions of Seeds every month. Yet, only a handful of them would have the potential to become a Seeing Thorn.

And among those handful, actually finding them was a task that took years—decades even—because the Seeing Thorn often cannibalized itself. Once it found a Seed with potential, it might even choose to swallow it to accelerate its own progress.

The petals of the Seeing Thorn organization took quite a lot of effort to find one, and even then, they would only use it to terraform another planet for their own purposes.

Sylas, almost certainly because of his fresh and brand-new Luck, stumbled onto one entirely by accident.

Well, at least he thought it was due to his Luck. The events that led to the Seed occurred before his Title change. But he didn’t actually find it until afterward.

The laws of cause and effect, and how this all worked out in practice… they were too complicated for Sylas to parse apart.

But what he did know was that, whether because of his broken Luck or not, the Hollow Wing was a Mount among Mounts. There was even a chance that it was the best chance Sylas had received out of all his rewards.

Technically, this was only possible because of the Scorned Wraps, not because of the rewards he received. But… if one thought back, the reason all of this happened in the first place was because Sylas used the All-Seeing Eye to reach Tier Three Madness Disciple, ultimately making it target him the way it did.

All things considered…

This was a reward for his efforts.

Sylas hopped down from the Hollow Wing’s back.

The first reason he did this was to feel the detachment triggered by no longer being mounted on it. The sapping of his strength and the loss of a +100% boost to his stats was immediate.

The second reason was to really look at it and to try and feel out what it could do without him mounted on it.

But as it seemed, though a Sacred Mount, it was still a Mount. The Hollow Wing couldn’t do much without Sylas attached to it. It was almost impotent in a way.

“Holy shit…”

Alex managed to weave through the chaos at some unknown point and appeared by Sylas’ side.

“… I really want to ask you how you got your hands on something so ridiculous right now. But, uh… we are kind of in the middle of a warzone, and soon there’s going to be an army of hornets very angry that their queen is dead. No, I mispoke.

“More like an army of suicide bombers. So, not to hurry you but…” Alex grimaced, nudging Sylas with an elbow and flexing his jaw a few times.

Sylas didn’t respond immediately, but the Hollow Wing received an order and shot into the Hibernation Realm.

After a few more seconds lost in thought, Sylas moved to the corpse of the queen hornet. He pressed a hand onto its body and lifted.

Almost instantly, it was burnt to ash as the Scorned Wraps assumed Sylas was using it as a weapon.

With the queen hornet dead, it had no Will to fight back, so it didn’t take Sylas much effort to trigger this phenomenon.

With the queen gone, an enormous hole opened up. Its body had been buried into the ground, hiding what was likely the only escape route out of this hellscape…

And into another one.

Sylas hopped down, and Alex found himself grimacing again.

“Can’t you be more talkative?”

He really wanted to shed more tears. There was nothing but a black hole in front of them, and they had no idea how deep it was. Plus, even if they had telekinesis—which they didn’t—their Will didn’t work in this world for reasons Alex seemed to have figured out through Sylas’ questions about Demons.

This wasn’t to say that only Demonic Will worked here. Instead, it was that their Wills weren’t nearly as strong as Sylas’ own.

“Welp, let’s go.”

Alex made a move to grab Jala by the back of his collar, as if he were some sort of pup, but the latter had already leapt.

Alex sighed. “Everybody leaves me.”

…

The world of black warped around them, and Sylas almost instantly felt that something was off.

In his visualization, this was just a straight shot down. It was about 300 meters in depth or so, and once they reached the bottom, they should be out of the dense carve-out of bone. Even if they found themselves in another cave, the earth that made it up should be far more malleable, and they’d be able to carve a way out.

In fact, if Sylas was insane enough, he could probably just use the Hollow Wing and Hollow Burst to shoot out. He doubted this earth was more than 20 kilometers thick.

But Hollow Burst was still on cooldown. Rather than a flashing number on his screen, he could just feel that the Hollow Wing couldn’t use it yet—oddly because it was still too young.

This aside, the problem now was that there was spatial energy all of a sudden.