Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1196: Own Path [Bonus]

[Thanks trippelstabb. You didn’t have to thrust it through my heart too, though. I was already dead </3]

Sylas stood across from Cassarae in silence, watching her for a moment. When she wasn’t cursing up a storm, she really was a beauty. Her dark hair carried a natural loose curl to it, her blue eyes were almost fiercely bright, and the caramel of her skin shone with a healthier and healthier glow every day.

One might imagine that as they improved their Genes, their looks also benefited. But while this was mostly fiction and pseudoscience even in this world, there was an enhancement to the traits you already had.

That said, Sylas knew that he was lying through his teeth—or at least his thoughts—right about now. He quite liked Cassarae’s fierceness. In his eyes, she didn’t lose much of her beauty at all even when she was cursing.

But there was a novel sort of feeling right now, when she was a bit muted, a bit nervous, even a bit reserved. It wasn’t an expression she held very often at all, and there in it held a bit of… guilt, maybe?

“What’s wrong?” Sylas finally asked.

“It took you like three minutes to finally ask me that question,” Cassarae muttered.

“I was just observing.”

“Pervert.”

“I didn’t say what I was observing.”

“Fuck you.”

There was a slight curl to Sylas’ lips, but he didn’t say much after that. He just stood there, waiting for her to say what she seemed to be holding in.

“I think I’m going to stay with Petals of the Seeing Thorn.”

Sylas raised an eyebrow.

It was quite interesting that she said this. Originally, when he left Earth, none of this was part of the plan. Sylas just ended up getting caught up in the whirlwind and had no choice but to use Cassarae’s status like this.

Luckily, everything managed to fall into place, and his out-maneuvering the Petals of the Seeing Thorn was almost certainly related to his new Contested Title. But Cassarae choosing to stay with them now was actually almost suicidal.

The best plan—or at least the safest one—was to sever the connection the Petals of the Seeing Thorn had with this galaxy by destroying their headquarters. However…

Cassarae was smart enough to know that such an action would leave her at a dead end.

There was no way she would be able to survive out there. The organization would know that she was a part of what happened here, and even if they didn’t directly harm her life in order to protect their reputation, they had a million other ways to deal with her.

The same would be true of Sylas as well. He wouldn’t say anything, and he wouldn’t complain either, but a target would almost assuredly appear on his back as well.

What would it feel like to have the Sector’s foremost intelligence network with a hefty vendetta against you?

It would be little more than a constant pain at best, and even the mild results would almost certainly mean death.

However… there was another path.

If Cassarae stayed.

It wouldn’t be immediate, and the Petals of the Seeing Thorn would hardly see a value in her and would certainly continue to target Sylas… at least until she managed to prove her worth.

The Petals of the Seeing Thorn weren’t a normal organization that weighed cost and benefits. On the surface, they wanted for nothing and hardly made grabs for power either.

Instead, they spread themselves cleverly, marrying themselves to powerful men and planting pawns in various powerful families.

Very soon, it wouldn’t just be the Milky Way that saw Sylas as one of them men, but the entire Sector. That, Cassarae was sure of.

And once Cassarae proved her worth as well, if they leapt over these hurdles together, there would at least be one enemy they could eliminate without shedding blood.

But if Sylas had no remaining connection to the Petals of the Seeing Thorn because Cassarae severed her ties, she would be adding to his problems, not diminishing them.

There was also something less obvious she was leaving unsaid—not that she had to explain any of the rest of it to Sylas anyway, which was why she didn’t bother.

She felt too useless, even now, even looking at these new shiny stats and these shocking Genes, and Gene Talents, and Skills that had just been piled onto her.

She had watched Sylas’ battle with Alex, feeling that she had no chance against the latter, and yet Sylas toyed with him like he was hardly much at all.

Of course, that was also because she was still Level 0 right now, but she still felt like there was so much more potential for her to unearth—so many more secrets in her body, on Earth, in the Milky Way as a whole.

She would remain at Level 0 for longer if she could manage it, but that wouldn’t stop her from feeling that weight of inferiority either.

All her life, Cassarae had been an exceptionally prideful woman. Her tongue was just a symptom of that. In a lot of ways, she and Sylas were similar at least in that regard…

And there was something inside her that cracked and festered with disgust every time she thought about being a damsel who just felt like she was in constant need of Sylas’ help and coddling. It really pissed her off.

Yet, unlike everything else in her life that she could just tell to fuck off or flip a finger at, she couldn’t bring herself to do the same to Sylas—not again. She really didn’t want to lose him.

So this time, she had to do this.

She had to stay in the belly of the beast and carve her own way out.

There would certainly be a new D-Grade sent to replace Matriarch Valeria. The outer branches would almost certainly put up one roadblock after another to stop her from continuing a rise through their ranks after she had killed their last and broken their rules.

This time she could skate by because Matriarch Valeria had broken even worse rules, but how long before they used that as an excuse to suppress her more?

She knew that there would only be more trials, and even if her challenges wouldn’t be as bad as Sylas’, to scale, they would threaten her life no less.

But she wanted this anyway. And she didn’t want Sylas breathing over her shoulder to help at every turn either.

Sylas looked at her for a long while, many things being left unsaid, before he nodded.

“Alright.”

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