Chapter 170: Read

At this moment, Sylas' Basic Aetherflow was progressing by leaps and bounds.

Whereas a failed fusion lasted just 30 seconds, a successful fusion was not only deeper in benefits but lasted a full three minutes.

By the end of it, Sylas realized one more important fact.

By relying on himself rather than the system to absorb Genes, the benefits were like night and day.

None of this was the special ability of Taboo Bond or Extricate. It was purely the benefit of absorbing Genes without the obfuscation of the system.

And it was truly a game changer.

There was no reason Sylas could only use this on himself. He should be able to allow others to experience this just as easily.

The best part was that while he wouldn't succeed with every Gene with his current poor Gene State, that didn't matter as much as it should have.

There was a benefit even for failure, and the best part was that with Extricate, he didn't waste any Genes either.

If he tried to use the system to absorb Genes, he would have lost 90% without a method of gaining them back. But with Extricate, even a failure had some positives.

As the last of the feelings faded away, Sylas checked his stats mostly out of habit. He had been training every day, and it was so convenient to take a look that he thought why not.

What he didn't expect was that there'd be a real change.

**[Name: Sylas Grimblade]**

- **[Species: Human (F)]**

- **[Affiliation: Grimblade Lineage]**

- **[Profession: Vipermancer (FFF+)]**

- **[Level: 0]**

- **[Coins: 7294 (F)]**

- **[Titles: A Flexible Will; System Breaker; Legendary Tamer; Skill Savant (FFF+); Madness Conqueror (FF-); Common Arts Enthusiast (F-); A Patient Stalker (F-)]**

**[Physical: 98]**

- **[Strength: 101]**

- **[Constitution: 91]**

- **[Dexterity: 100]**

- **[Speed: 100]**

**[Mental: 136]**

- **[Intelligence: 207]**

- **[Wisdom: 62]**

- **[Charisma: 142]**

**[Will: 218]**

**[Luck: 22]**

**[Skills: Madness Control (FF+); Basic Scouting (F-); Maddened Enlightenment (FF+); Astral Bind (F+); Momentum Shift (F+); Solidify (F+)]**

**[Comprehensions: Madness (FFF)]**

**[Gene State: Inflexible]**

- **[Fragmented Genes: Grimblade Lineage (F); (8) Dexterity (F); (6) Constitution (F); (4) Strength (F)]**

- **[Common Genes: (6) Speed (F); (6) Strength (F); (4) Constitution (F); (6) Dexterity (F); (7) Intelligence (F); (3) Wisdom (F); (1) Will (F)]**

- **[Bronze Genes: Basic Aetherflow (F)]**

'My Intelligence went up by two!'

Assuming that he had gained one stat point before Skill Savant gave him a 100% boost, that meant that because he had succeeded in absorbing one Gene, the benefits were enough to increase his Stat Limit.

Sylas was in shock. He hadn't even felt a dull ache, let alone the usual shocking amount of pain.

Quickly, Sylas began to try again and again.

Unfortunately, his Gene State was too poor. He only managed to succeed one more time despite the fact Rojan had 23 total Gene Stats.

The Gene he succeeded with was a Dexterity Gene, but nothing at all happened to his stats. For now, Sylas could only hypothesize that this "hack" was only available for the Mental stats, but he had no way to confirm.

That said, it wasn't as though he gained nothing at all.

The feeling of fusing with the Dexterity Gene successfully was just as magical. He felt like he was observing his body as an outsider looking in.

Thanks to this, his grasp of Sudden Burst had increased by a large margin as well. In the past, he could only use it once every few minutes, and even then, it was very hard on his body.

But now he felt like twice or thrice a minute wasn't a huge issue. The limit was no longer his body, per se, but rather whether his stamina could keep up. He at least didn't have to worry about suddenly tearing something.

Sylas exhaled and let the final magical state float away. He picked up the man's corpse and stored it away. Leaving it here would only be inviting trouble.

'Time to go.'

...

Sylas returned to Bloom and Mark's home smoothly. The swelling in his nose had gone down considerably, but he still hid it with his mask. Since he had worn it while heading out, neither of the two seemed to react much to it.

"We'll be heading out tomorrow," Bloom suddenly said as Sylas was heading up the stairs to shower and rest.

"Oh? Where?" Sylas asked.

"We'll be scouting out the metallurgy compound we spoke about before. No issues, right?"

Sylas looked back. "Why would there be?"

Bloom shrugged. "You're smart, so I'm sure you've already found a lot of this to be weird."

Their gazes met and neither one said anything for a while.

"The world isn't the same anymore. Quite frankly, I blame the Grimblades for their selfishness in this regard, but I blame the government more.

"There are any number of reasons I can think of for why the Grimblades would be forced to hide this truth. Maybe they feared retaliation from the government, or maybe they just felt they had no obligation to, and you'd be correct.

"The Grimblades have no obligation to the people of the world, but the governments certainly did and do, but they all decided to sit on their hands.

"If you're asking me if I feel uncomfortable about going after them, no, not really. If they had done right by the world, I wouldn't have ended up on your side to begin with. They only have themselves to blame."

After saying this, Sylas headed up the stairs as Mark peeked out of the kitchen.

The large, lovable brute didn't expect the conversation to take such a turn, and when he looked at his sister, he found a contemplative expression on her face.

Everything they knew about Sylas said that he wasn't scheming. He had snapped at the honeytrap Astrid sent at him when a scheming person would have more than likely pretended to fall for it. And now he was speaking so boldly about things that Bloom had planned to only touch upon at a surface level.

He was... very hard to read.