Genetic Ascension

Sylas' neck craned to the skies, watching the movement of the bodies.

There were very clear tracks to follow. Not only could you watch the planets, stars, and moons move, but you knew exactly where they were going as well. From time to time you would be surprised by a sudden crossing over, but even then that only occurred when tracks had intersections between one another.

Sylas didn't step into the observatory, at least not yet. He stood at the very edge of the roadway of arching trees.

Deep inside, he knew that once he took this step there was no going back. But he also knew that at this point, going backward also wasn't an option. It certainly wouldn't allow him to do that.

This odd space… it might as well be another world entirely.

Luckily, Sylas was pretty sure that this was still within Earth's time warp, so he wouldn't be dealing with a ridiculous situation again. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't be so calm.

'Fascinating…'

After three minutes or so, Sylas finally found what he was trying to spot. But then he paused again.

'No, that isn't the complete picture, I'm still missing something.'

The map in Sylas' head was whirring. It looked like a normal series of mazes, but if there was anything Sylas had learned from the Mountains of Giza, nothing was as it seemed.

In the pyramids, the map he had deduced as a youth ended up being mapped onto spatial nodes that teleported them to all sorts of places and nearly killed him every time.

In this case, it felt like the map in his head might be a dummy of sorts. The reason he hadn't found the place it corresponded to was because that place didn't exist. But more importantly than that…

'The Lost City of Gold Points Toward the Sea. The Mountains of Giza Point Toward the Stars…'

It was an interesting line, and one that he had heard many times before.

There was a puzzle here, as expected. But the puzzle was only half of what it was meant to be.

Why were there two of these places?

Was it that there were two places like he thought? Or was it that there were two entrances and just one location? Was he already standing in the place he hoped to reach in Eurpeia?

But in that case, if this was the Stars…

Then where was the Sea?

Sylas looked down.

The ground was unassuming, a smooth, polished marble. It was easy to ignore. Who would care to observe the ground they walked on very closely?
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Sylas looked at it for a moment and then back up. Then he looked down again.

'The Lost City of Gold Points Toward the Sea…'

Sylas frowned. He felt like something was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite understand it.

The Amazonian Wilds… Earth had been forcefully integrated with it, and the result was the Lost City of Gold expanding into the ocean a great deal. It had completely changed the landscape of York City.

But was that what was meant by pointing toward the Sea?

'What's the relationship between Stars and the Sea…'

Even if he took it literally, quite a lot. The heat that came from the Sun had a huge effect on how the oceans of Earth read and reacted to things.

If he took it a little less literally… the Moon directly influenced the tides of Earth.

'The tides…'

This observatory wasn't just a place to watch the stars. It had planets and moons moving in synchronized harmony. It was beautiful to watch, but it was also a sign.

'Together.'

That was when Sylas finally understood.

The map in his mind and the map he had memorized as a child began to interlace with one another. He shifted their positions again and again, his mind working in overdrive as he turned them over once again, trying to find how they might fit together.

He didn't find one, so he separated them again.

'No, not together… one influencing the other.'

When Sylas realized this, he changed the arrangement again. But it still wasn't working the way he wanted.

But then it clicked.

'Spatial nodes…'

The map of the Mountains of Giza weren't just pathways, they were spatial nodes.

Normally, this would be a roadblock. To 99% of people on Earth, even in the galaxy, there would be no further to go.

But just recently… Sylas gained the ability to see through the Mesh of Reality, and while he had no ability to manipulate space, what he could do was understand it.

"Nosphaleen."

It had already been a while. When he summoned Nosphaleen again, she was already towering over him with a vibrancy to her expression and a rosiness to her cheeks.

She was back to 100%.

The strength of a Legendary Profession was displaying its might once again.

Without explaining much, the connection between the two made things clear to the Mesmeryx disciple.

"I understand."

If Sylas was going to take the spatial manipulation seriously, then he needed Nosphaleen here to do one very important thing.

Understand the sea for him.

'Einstein's theory of relativity… these celestial bodies, they all interact with the Mesh of Reality, bending and twisting it, imprinting it with their existence with nothing more than their mass. If that's one half of things, then…'

Sylas looked up, mapping how these celestial bodies would interact with the Mesh of Reality bent and folded by the Mountains of Giza.

Nosphaleen took control of the other map, using Siren's Call and her Water Aether to mold a version of it before her.

Feeling the influence of Sylas' thoughts, she moved naturally, the Water Aether shifting as the tides were influenced by the shifting spatial nodes.

Their minds became closer and closer, reaching a harmony until their deductions were all but one.

They fell into a quasi Total Merge and things flowed faster and faster until they clicked.

Both of their eyes flashed open at the same time, Sylas taking a step forward that crossed the threshold he had been staying behind all along.