[Woodland Poison Lance (Silver) (Treasure)]
[Level: 4]
[+450 Strength]
[Ability: Pierce; Erode]
[Strength is doubly as Effective]
[Destroy structural integrity of Aether]
[Level Up Requirement: <40 Bronze> Genes]
[Durability: 40/50]
—
A flash echoed from the lance and its power progressed once again.
‘So I was right…’
The maze was a huge problem for Sylas. If not for the fact his spatial orientation was excellent, and he was able to ensure that he was constantly moving in one main direction, he would have long become lost.
Essentially, he was constantly calculating in his mind exactly how many meters he moved north, south, east, or west. Only this way could he pick a direction.
But ultimately, he wasn’t a computer. There would eventually be small errors that stacked on top of each other. If this went on for long enough, he would be completely lost. Even counting his steps wouldn’t help.
Luckily, for now, his measurements were only off a few centimeters at most. But that also meant that every few hundred meters came with meters of error.
Sylas already realized by now that he would have to find another way through this Dungeon. It would be one thing if the number of enemies was limited; then there was only so much time that it could spend leading him around by the nose.
But… the Dungeon Description had warned him of mutations. Who was to say that more enemies weren’t spawning for every moment he was in here without defeating the BOSS? And what if he delayed for too long and the Dungeon ended up evolving beyond something that he could handle?
It was already on the verge of a Dungeon Break. If the influence of the Dynamic Field Dungeon was added on top of that, then there was no way of predicting what would happen to him.
As such, in this time, he had been looking for other methods to deal with this situation.
The obvious answer seemed to be to plow through these walls and make a beeline for the center. But although these walls seemed to move easily, he didn’t have the means of blasting a hole through them consistently.
Not only were they sturdy, but they were self-healing. The latter should have been obvious by the fact they could morph and move so easily in the first place, but any hole that he did make would end up with a twisting spiral of churning vines before it was swallowed up. If he was too slow, he would even end up trapped inside.
That was when Sylas turned to an unexpected source.
He had been feeding the lance with Genes now for the last little while, but then it hit him…
Why did this even work?
Were Legendary Path Treasures living organisms?
It didn’t seem so. But how could they absorb Genes? And if they could absorb Genes, then could Genes be pulled out of them?
What if he used Extricate on a Legendary Path Treasure?
Sylas didn’t act on this impulse immediately. Instead, he observed another Gene absorption to see if it was similar or not.
The short answer was… kind of.
The long answer was that the Gene absorption of the lance was only similar up to the point the Gene was actually taken in.
At that point, something changed. It was incredibly subtle, so much so that it took all of Sylas’ focus before he realized it.
Wanting to make sure he wasn’t making things up, this time Sylas used Extricate. Rather than taking a Gene out of the lance, he moved to put one in.
This time, the change was much more obvious to him.
Everything was normal up until the absorption point, and then the Gene suddenly collapsed into its Foundations and Strokes, and then collapsed into something even more fundamental before it was sucked into the weapon.
At the same moment, faint Runes on the Legendary Path Treasure grew more realistic. It was only just the slightest bit, clearly enough to make a small change, but not enough to lead to a Level change.
‘It’s decomposing Runes into a fundamental energy. But that’s not nearly the most shocking part, not by a long stretch. What’s really shocking is the Runes on it. These Runes… they’re the real living creatures….’
Sylas realized something shocking. The Legendary Path Treasures weren’t alive, but rather their Runes made them alive.
As they absorbed some odd fundamental energy from Genes, they incorporated it into themselves and thus grew more real and lively.
‘This is Rune Spark as well…’
With Rune Spark, one could practically breathe Runes into Existence. But Sylas had never considered how…
What he didn’t expect was to come across the answer before he could even begin to think of it seriously.
This was the second time he had already come into contact with Rune Spark.
However, what was even more shocking was that he was wrong.
When he used the Madness Key to attempt a confirmation, it told him that the best Legendary Path Treasures were forged with Rune Vitality, a step below Rune Spark, while the vast majority were forged with Rune Essence.
That said, that was only one part of forging a Legendary Path Treasure.
Another part was alloy formation or metallurgy. Not only did you need special flexible materials that could grow with the weapon over time, but usually one needed a fusion of them that could best match the Runes of the Treasure in question.
The third part was the rare treasures needed to inscribe the Runes in the first place. Much like Ragnar would certainly scream from the rooftops, inscribing permanent Runes required a great deal of wealth.
The fourth part was the blueprint. Even if you had all the skill in these separate parts in the world, and you had more wealth than you knew what to do with, there were some blueprints that would be rejected by the system for unknown reasons.
That meant you either needed to buy a functional blueprint for an astronomical price or waste a mountain of resources until you researched one that would work yourself.
That said… even if all of this lined up for Sylas, he was entirely uninterested. His thoughts were attracted by something else.
