Sylas was fairly confident in getting this far, but for the next steps, he would be flying blind, not to mention the fact he was on a time crunch.
He could still withstand the chilling wind for longer, but once he started to focus on this task, it would surely begin to take up his Wisdom. By then, he might start suffering again.
It also had to be remembered that he had to complete this round within 50% of the time Brisa took to complete it. Or else he would be disqualified and fail the Dungeon. By then, all the work he had done would be useless.
The good news was that he had only taken a few minutes to get here at most, thanks to the time crunch that had been his fusion time limit. The bad news was that he still wasn’t sure how long this would take.
But he hoped that the risk would be worth it.
The first thing he did was truly tap into the senses of One Kind For Me. He wanted to feel what made Nosphaleen a Serpentes; only that way would he be able to take away the Genes that made her decidedly not that.
However, the process was more complicated than even he had guessed.
The reason for that was obvious.
Physical Genes, Mental Genes, and Unique Genes were the only three categories of Genes that Sylas knew until this point. But none of them seemed to be particularly “Race specific.”
He could take Strength Genes from beasts and incorporate them into his body just fine, for example.
The only gray area was Unique Genes that required unique catalysts that might or might not be Race specific. But even then, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
So what exactly did it mean to be a specific Race? Where were the Genes that differentiated them? Why was he human? Why was Nosphaleen a Clypsian?
These were answers that Sylas didn’t have. However, his focused attention on One Kind For Me was giving him insights he had never seen before.
‘How… fascinating…’
As a man of Earth, Sylas’ natural instinct toward Genes was inextricably linked to DNA. The DNA was a series of nucleotides, and Genes were segments of DNA and could be either expressed or suppressed depending on one’s stage of life, development, or even various environmental factors.
Due to this bias, most of the time he thought of the word Gene, as used by the system, to just be used in a more colloquial sense. It was better to think of Genes as power-ups than real Genes because that didn’t make sense.
However, that perspective began to change somewhat after he saw the Basilisk King’s Gene Sequence. That was the wake-up call, the insightful incident that made it quite obvious to him that the Genes of this “fantasy” world and that of Earth were one and the same.
That left a question, though…
How?
Why could he just take Genes from one Race and incorporate them into himself?
However… wasn’t the answer obvious?
The nucleotides that built up DNA were practically the same across most species. If those building blocks were all the same, then wasn’t it only natural that if this system could isolate some proponents of it, all Races would be able to benefit?
In that case, what differentiated the Races?
It took Sylas half an hour before he found a satisfactory answer. It was so complex that without the improvement to his Wisdom, he wouldn’t have been able to tease it apart.
The simple answer was three words: It was deeper.
Physical, Mental, and Unique Genes were just the surface. What made certain Races unique was located deeper, a further layer beneath. From what Sylas could tell, there was actually more than just one layer.
Beneath Physical, Mental, and Unique Genes, there was something that he could only describe as a holistic membrane. The best word for it was actually constitution, but he didn’t want to use it when the stat existed.
Then, deeper than that, there seemed to be a connection to the blood and emphasis on it.
Then, deeper than even that, there seemed to be something eerily similar to what he had felt when he first comprehended Rune Soul… something like the mind, or… the soul.
Sylas could actually feel that there was probably a layer even deeper than that, and there were complications to each one of the layers that he couldn’t quite tease apart.
What he knew for sure was one thing.
Taboo Bond was still far too weak to mess with any of this stuff.
It felt like he had run into a wall. Would he have to kill her after all?
He stood in silence, his brows furrowed in concentration. He was so focused that he only had the mind to pay to Nosphaleen and the task at hand. The pain that his body was experiencing from the wind seemed to be nothing more than an afterthought.
‘Maybe instead of making her less Clypsian, I can try to make her more Serpentes… Or…’
Sylas’ eyes flashed and he began to press down Nosphaleen’s body with his Will. By now, she was only half awake. Her body was barely standing upright. If Sylas wanted, he could kill her with a single flick of his finger.
Right now, he was controlling the cancerous Gene, taking hold of it and forcing it to warp and mutate the Clypsian Genes in Nosphaleen’s body.
Although he couldn’t Extricate layers deeper than the surface layer, his ability to maneuver through them was still there. That was displayed with the Arctic Emperor Bear’s Gene Talent. And now… he was going to try it again.
‘It’s working…’
Sylas could feel Nosphaleen growing weaker and weaker; she even collapsed forward and was only standing because he continued to hold her up.
Terrifying cancerous growths began to spread across her once flawless skin, and her beautiful features became twisted. Tumors sprang across her body, but Sylas’ gaze only became brighter and brighter.
‘There!’
Sylas immediately circulated his Aether and Will, forcing a Contract onto Nosphaleen who didn’t even have the consciousness to resist.
