Genetic Ascension
chapter-165

[500 PSs bonus chapter]

The software whirred to life and the professor looked at Sylas. Clearly, this was his wheelhouse now.

Sylas used his intention to will the Gene Sequence into the software once again.

The software he was using was known somewhat amusedly as CAD DNA. It had three simple functions.

The first was the most important, and that was its predictive model. It could take an input, feed it into a DNA sequence, and output the result. This was why Sylas was so familiar with it, because it was an invaluable tool in perfecting his venom vaccine.

The second was its compare and contrast. It had a database of species within it, and it was easy to upload a Gene Sequence into it and point out the odd, out-of-place mutations.

The third was splicing. It was a combination of the first two, and it could trigger mutations and changes in a DNA sequence and deduce the result.

Unfortunately, after a few promising seconds, the program crashed once again.

Sylas sighed. This was exactly what he was worried about. Did he make a wasted trip?

'No. The professor is correct. I've been too rigid in my thinking. If intention is enough to get the system to interact with real-world technology, who's to say that that's the limit?'

'What if I restrict what portions of the Gene Sequence I want to upload? Wait, how far can I take my intention in the first place? If I say I want just the important parts projected, would that be a loophole that forces the system to do some of the legwork for me?'

As Sylas thought, they booted up the program again.

For the next five minutes or so, they tried several things and Sylas learned quite a bit.

First, it was possible to upload the Gene Sequence in bits and pieces.

Second, it wasn't possible to force the system to do the legwork for him by tweaking his intention. For example, he couldn't just ask it to only send in the important parts because he needed an understanding of what those parts were, at least vaguely.

Third, the Basilisk was most similar to the Titanoboa in terms of Gene Sequence, a creature that was extinct on Earth, but that Sylas had seen once before in the Trial. This was mostly extrapolation, but it seemed about right.

Fourth, the Basilisk King had what looked like several knots in its Gene Sequence, and they were the root of the most complexity. When these knots were ignored, the upload went just fine. It seemed that whatever sequences were in these knots were in a permanent state of non-expression.

Fifth was the most surprising.

Sylas felt that, less than the program analyzing the data for him, he seemed to be naturally understanding things as he went.

And that was when it happened.

[Path Quest <Document Contract Gene Sequence> Completed]

[+250 Experience]

[One Kind For Me]

[Level: 2]

[Experience: 160/200]

[Path Talent: Beast Totem Lv2; Insight Lv2]

[Beast Totem (Path Talent)]

[>Suppress <F-rank> Serpentes Beasts by <30%>]

[>Forms Hibernation Realm where recovery increases by <200%>]

[>Increase Fusion speed by <100%>]

[>Buff Contracts by <40%>]

[Insight (Path Talent)]

[>Observe Gene Sequence of Contract]

[>Sense Evolution Triggers]

[>Comprehend Contract]

[Taboo Bond]

[Level: 2]

[Experience: 50/400]

[Path Talent: Extricate Lv2]

[Extricate (Path Talent)]

[>Extricate <F-Rank Common> Genes]

Sylas didn't expect the easy upgrade, and he honestly didn't expect that the scaling would be so good.

Was this the strength of a Legendary Profession?

Just from a single increase in Level, his Hibernation Realm gained an extra 100% to recovery speed, the speed of his Fusion with the Basilisk King had increased to 100% from 50%, and he could even buff the Basilisk King by an additional 20% on top of the already ridiculous 20% boost.

The Basilisk King already had a ridiculous 111 Strength and 123 Constitution, what did it mean to boost that by 40%?

But he was still most interested in Extricate from Taboo Bond.

He still hadn't had the opportunity to test it because before, it could only Extricate Fragmented Genes. Now that it was Level 2, it could Extricate Common Genes.

All the creatures he had come across now had Common Genes, so he couldn't even test it at all. Now… he just might be able to.

'Hm, there was no change to the "Insight" skill of One Kind For Me, though. The others have numbers attached to them so it's easy to see the changes, but…'

Sylas tried to pull up the Gene Sequence again, the first ability of Insight, and unsurprisingly, there were changes.

For one, although he still felt overloaded, it wasn't as exaggerated as in the past, where he was forced to close it immediately.

Second, he felt that his innate understanding was actually a level deeper than it had been before.

He could almost "see" what portions of the Gene Sequences decided Strength or Constitution, and he even found the knot that held the Basilisk King's Dormant Gene Talent, Voice of a King.

Not only could he tell which knot it was, but he could also tell that the other knots were unlike the King's Gaze knot. While King's Gaze had once been awakened, the others had never been, as though they were in a permanent state of Dormancy. The system didn't even mention them.

'I see, so this should be the Basilisk King's path to evolution. I just need to find methods of undoing those knots.'

But that was easier said than done.

There were three knots in total outside of King's Gaze, but the last knot of the three was especially troublesome. That was because it looked to be a multi-layered knot, one that looked as though someone had tied several simple knots into a long rope before wrapping them all into a single bow.

Sylas and the professor spent more time going through some things, but eventually Sylas realized that he wasn't getting much more out of it. There was only so much a program designed by humans of this world could do about a creature born in the Aether Plane.

"Looks like this is as far as we can go for now," Sylas said.