Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2338

Sylas' eyes narrowed as he stared into the darkness beneath the nebula, but for several moments he didn't move, and neither did the ancient eyes looking back at him from within that compressed pocket of void.

He would have recognized those eyes anywhere, which made the situation stranger rather than clearer, because even after everything he had experienced, Sylas had still never received a proper explanation for how Gogo had ended up where he first found him.

Gogo was the only one of his Contracts he had discovered inside a Dungeon, not even a Field Dungeon, and somehow the boss of that Dungeon had managed to leave with him alive.

That had never made much sense, especially when Sylas considered what Gogo actually was.

If the creatures within Dungeons were created by the system in a manner similar to the spawned existences produced by various City Steles, then the explanation might ultimately come down to Will, and a Fate Dragon certainly possessed enough of that.

All it would need to do was leak out enough of itself for the system to interpret, then allow that Will to be used as a blueprint to reconstruct a body that could exist outside the place it was hiding.

From there, much of what came afterward became easier to understand. Gogo's Will had been strangely fragile when Sylas first met him, and his Pride had been even weaker, a contradiction for a Serpentes carrying such a lofty Legendary Lineage, but perhaps that weakness had been intentional.

The Fate Dragon had been hiding from the universe itself, and if it wanted to survive without the Clan that had created it, whatever fragment of itself entered the outside world would have needed to lower its head first.

The universe believed in Dragons. Near every Living Will in existence carried some concept of their might, whether through fear, reverence, myth, ambition, or the endless stories that placed them at the pinnacle, and any Dead Will that stood against that collective understanding would be crushed beneath it.

Sylas could almost imagine the relationship like antimatter meeting matter, the Fate Dragon's claim colliding with the accumulated Will of the universe until whichever side possessed less weight was simply erased.

If the Fate Dragon wanted to survive, then, its safest option was to send out something small enough that the universe wouldn't bother crushing it. A weak fragment could bow its head, live, grow, gather weight, then perhaps follow a Quest or some other path that slowly rebuilt the authority it had once possessed until it could return and stare out from the void with those same ancient eyes.

The possibility was so audacious that Sylas couldn't stop the grin spreading across his face.

With a thought, he summoned Gogo.

The enormous black Serpentes appeared beside him, his body snaking across the void while the horns rising from his head looked prouder than Sylas remembered.

Gogo turned toward the Fate Dragon without any visible surprise, and that single reaction told Sylas almost as much as any answer might have.

"So, Gogo," Sylas spoke, his grin deepening. "You've been using me all this time, is that it?"

Gogo didn't respond.

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