Germaine took a breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, there was a sharpness that hadn't been there before. For the first ti since Sylas t her, she looked like an actual C-tier for once.
Not that it made much of a difference.
"There's a reason there's a separation between the normal mbers of Legacy and the Professors. When you beco a Professor, you cross over a line of humanity you can't get back. The change starts here. I will say it one more ti. There is no going back.
"Just seeing it is enough to change everything. This isn't sothing that you can take a glance at and then just decide you don't want to deal with it anymore. You have to make the choice now."
Sylas didn't reply, but he also didn't seem to be impatient. He listened to Germaine despite the fact she wasn't saying what he had clearly asked to hear.
He knew that she was telling the truth.
He had only seen two Professors in the past, but even if both of them were insane, there was no reason for them to be the sa sort of insane. Why would they all seemingly forget their humanity?
Neither seed to be tied down to a single Race any longer, willing to do whatever it took to beco greater.
But while the sentint itself was noble, there was sothing particularly sad about forgetting the origin of who you were so completely and wholly.
There was a very clever thought experint of philosophy that posited a simple question: At what point did a repaired ship beco a new ship? Was it when you changed the sail? Maybe the mast? Maybe after you had swapped out 50% of the original wood? 60%? 70%?
Was it a factor of ti? If it took you 100 years of slow repairs until none of the original ship remained, could you still call it the original ship? What if you did all the sa repairs instantly?
In a lot of ways, being able to play a ga of Jenga with your own genes and the layers of your body was exactly this thought experint.
One might think that so long as your Will remained the sa, it was all fine. But in this world... even your Will itself could be changed.
So, the question remained, just the slightest bit tweaked:
At what point did an evolving humanoid beco an entirely different person?
Was Germaine the sa person she had once been? Did she cross over after the strap-on? Maybe the spider leg? Or was it her hair, or the fake breasts?
Or had she beco a different person the mont she made the choice to change in the first place?
Sylas suddenly smiled. It was a sight that made Germaine's pupils constrict into pinholes.
"Show ," Sylas said.
There was only one thing that he could think of that could make Germaine react so solemnly, but just the re fact that this of all things made Sylas smile collapsed the last shred of resistance Germaine had in her heart.
This wasn't a man she could go against. There would only be one result should she ever decide to do such a thing: Her death.
Germaine's jaw unhinged and her neck snapped back. The sound of sothing grotesque and sowhat chanical gurgled, and the slightest arc of sothing so very familiar to Sylas shot through the air.
Crimson lightning.
Germaine scread, cracks of red appearing across her skin. She was clearly withstanding a great amount of pain, the re action of trying to tap into this energy rending apart sothing deep within her.
However, Sylas didn't so much as flinch. It seed that he was correct.
There was really only one thing that could make people as wild as the Professors forge such an existential dread as the foundation of their remarkably existence.
The ceiling of the universe.
Germaine collapsed, heaving for breath. Sothing was pressed into her palm, a piece of sothing that looked like a fragnt.
'Hm?'
Sylas' gaze flickered. Although he only saw a small piece of it, he recognized that material.
Cassarae's sword was made of it.
Considering he had spent little to no effort on secondary professions, this wasn't sothing that soone with Sylas' background should be able to point out. But Sylas might not have had foundational knowledge he had sothing far more important than that.
His senses and his Rune Mastery. More specifically, Seeing Weaver.
His ability to break down things into their fundantal Runes and see through their intricacies was on a completely different level now.
Germaine coughed and pulled herself up slowly, her body trembling. It took every bit of energy in her body to slowly push the fragnt in her hand further.
"Quickly," she said. "Brace yourself."
Sylas reached forward and plucked it out of her hands.
Germaine gasped with relief, but only in part. It seed that the fragnt even being in the room made her feel like the world was coming to an end. But when she finally had the wherewithal to check on Sylas, she froze.
Sylas just stood there, staring at the fragnt in his palm with the very sa cool indifference. Veins of red grew along his hand, and even down his forearm, but they couldn't seem to make it much further than that.
The cracks essentially seed controlled.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Sylas asked.
Normally, he didn't ask such things. But even after staring at the fragnt for a while, nothing was happening.
Germaine's bottom lip trembled as she tried to speak, but no words ca out.
"Sw... swall... you can..."
Her mind seed to have shattered. She didn't understand what she was seeing at all.
Sylas spun the shard on the tip of his finger. Swallow? No, that seed quite inefficient. Even if he used Primal Gut, there was no way he could digest sothing like this. And why would swallowing this help him to learn faster?
No. What it really did was destabilize the layers in his body, increasing his ability to manipulate them. The Professors' special thod was probably related to how they suppressed the pain and restrained this shard from wreaking havoc.
This shard basically did exactly what the Scorned Wraps did, except... while the Scorned Wraps broke the rules of the system, this shard broke the rules of the universe itself.
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