Genetic Ascension
Chapter 1199: Cutting Steak

Sylas let his thoughts settle in for a moment before he looked back toward Jala and Alex.

“What do you two know about Demons?”

Alex blinked, then looked at Jala. Jala still didn’t seem to know how to interact with Sylas at all, but he also had no idea how to answer that question.

Sylas just waited. He had never been the sort to ask questions even of those he thought were far weaker than himself. Plus, Jala and Alex both had perspectives on things he didn’t.

Alex had the Legacy and had somehow managed to reach the very same place Sylas had.

It had to be remembered that the underwater legacy was something that Sylas was only able to decipher based on his own puzzle. The region he had entered also flooded and would have killed him had he not made the right choice. Then he had to trust the currents of the ocean itself to lead him where he needed to go.

How Alex had managed to figure all of this out as well, Sylas didn’t know.

Sylas didn’t think himself the only intelligent person in the world, but he had a pretty good understanding of how impressive his feats were in relation to others—even if he didn’t find them impressive himself.

What he had done was very difficult for a normal person, but Alex was supposedly only a Bronze Legacy member in the eyes of the organization.

Either Alex had more secrets Sylas didn’t know of, or Alex had somehow been sharp enough to trick Legacy into misjudging him—something even Sylas hadn’t been able to do.

And then there was Jala… supposedly a person of Earth as well. His family had completed a Summoning on a completely different planet and had gone through things Sylas was still waiting for Earth to experience.

The wealth of knowledge a new Summoned World might have would be limited, but before their integration, they might very well have had random tidbits of very valuable information—just like they had random powerful treasures the rest of the universe would drool over—at least in the F-Grade.

“I don’t know much about Demons, man. All I know is that Legacy doesn’t have taboos over much—they only seek knowledge. But I couldn’t find anything on Demons, as though even Legacy didn’t dare to touch them.

“I thought it was a ridiculous boogeyman—so cliché. The big, bad demons are coming to ruin everything. So I was curious and dug into it. I couldn’t understand what made Demons so different from any other Race.

“But… I still found nothing. There really was nothing to find—just more things to speculate on.”

“Like?” Sylas asked.

“I don’t know. My best guess is that Demons are fundamentally different from every other Race. No, saying that makes it sound like Demons are a singular Race. They’re just as variable as we are. They have their own Humans, their own Unitaurs—though I’m not speaking literally—.”

Sylas nodded slowly. He only meant to say that Demons had as many widely variable Races within them as non-Demons did.

“—You know how back in third-grade biology they taught you about Life, Domains, down to Family, Genus, and Species? The taxonomic ranks? And how Domains were separated by what amoeba or some shit we came from?

“I’m thinking that Demons have even more fundamental differences from us than that. Usually, the Life umbrella encompasses everything, and the true divisions start at Domain.

“But I think that if we’re being the most accurate, Demons aren’t even under the same Life umbrella as the rest of us. Life should encompass every animal and plant in all of existence, no matter what their unique origins are. But Demons are so fundamentally different from us all that I bet that, by all our measures, they wouldn’t even be classified amongst the living.”

Sylas looked at Alex in silence for a long while.

It sounded as though Alex was just stumbling over his words, barely making some guesses and scrounging things together without much evidence, but Sylas didn’t believe so.

In fact, Sylas felt that Alex’s words were incredibly profound.

Rather than responding, Sylas turned and bent down toward the Horned Hornet, pressing a palm to it and trying to use Extricate.

Then he shook his head.

Right now, he could only Extricate Fragmented E-Grade Genes. This beast didn’t have any Fragmented Genes. But…

Sylas found that he couldn’t latch onto anything to fail in the first place, as though Extricate would never work on a Demon.

He fell into his thoughts again. The easiest method he had to test what he wanted to had slipped through his fingers—and it probably wouldn’t be much longer before more threats came this way. Sylas didn’t believe that things would be peaceful for so long.

“My great-grandfather once said something about Demons…” Jala said slowly.

Sylas looked over his shoulder from his crouched position, waiting for Jala to finish his words.

“… Their path for the universe and ours are fundamentally different. They aren’t any more destructive than the worst of us, but even if we both cut a steak, if we insist on cutting it with our right hand, they will insist on using the left.”

Sylas’s eyes flashed when he heard this.

There was no fundamental difference between the Demonic Poison Rune he had seen back then and his own Poison Runes. And yet, he couldn’t control it for the life of him.

But, back then, without Demonic Runes, he wouldn’t have been able to shatter the protective barrier around Professor Fembroise and clear that Quicktime Event.

Demonic Runes clashed with normal Runes in a way that completely destroyed and corrupted the latter—as though they weren’t even allowed to exist together.

And what were Runes if not the fundamental laws of the world? What better example of this could he ask for?

It was just far too dangerous for Sylas to use Demonic Runes openly, so he never even considered it outside of that one occasion.

But…

The sound of buzzing and flapping wings came from a distance, echoing across the walls.

…He had a feeling that his Demonic Will was going to be the only way they succeeded in this place now.

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