Chapter 2194: Bound

Genetic Ascension

Cassarae sniffled. Usually by now she would have cleared her throat and pretended nothing ever happened. But this time, she just kept holding onto Sylas. She didn't want him to let go.

She honestly couldn't remember the last time she felt so vulnerable around everyone. Half of her wanted to blame pregnancy hormones, but while she wasn't exactly a biology whizz like her mom was, she knew it couldn't have possibly settled in that speedy.

The only reason she even knew she was pregnant right now was because of her sharp senses. If anything, her pregnancy might last longer than the usual nine months, so it would probably be another couple weeks before she could really start blaming anything but herself.

But at this point, she didn't know if she was ready to deal with whatever hormones would come with that considering how she was acting now.

"… What happened?" she eventually asked in a soft voice.

"I just took a trip to the past."

"You didn't know, right?" there seemed to be a hint of threat in her voice.

Sylas shook his head. "No. I didn't expect it."

Cassarae exhaled a breath. "… Okay."

She didn't even seem to care that Sylas went back in time. At this point, so many weird things happened that she didn't even have the energy to ask what happened. Instead, she asked something else.

"And the Duchess? What happened to her?"

"Nothing."

"Then why'd she disappear?"

"I'm assuming that's because the loop closed and the S-tier version of herself trapped in here has finally woken up. So, right about now, all of her clones have fused into one."

Cassarae blinked, somewhat confused. She didn't really understand what was happening, but in the end, she just shrugged.

Sylas hadn't killed the Duchess and the Prince in the normal sense. He had deconstructed their bodies into their fundamental Runes, sealing them away using the Death Seal.

What was interesting about Split Realms was that they were originally designed to recreate the same circumstances over and over again, separating out those that entered their worlds and forcing them to face the same challenge at the same time.

The Monkey King had manipulated and changed things about how the Split Realm worked, which was why Sylas had ended up in the same realm as the Duchess, and then eventually ran into the others as well at the end, but a Split Realm was still a Split Realm.

So, Sylas just took advantage of it.

He mixed the essence that was the Duchess and the Prince into the soup of Runes the Split Realm was meant to multiply and recreate. So long as their Wills were preserved by the Split Realm, they wouldn't be considered to have died true deaths.

What was great about Split Realms was that they could be entered again and again, and they wouldn't have to be entered during the same eras either.

Back on Earth, Sylas had entered the Mountains of Giza and spotted Archibald's name on the list. But as far as he knew, Archibald was from the Seventh Summoning. That meant that an entire two eras and several generations passed, and yet they still took part in the same Split Realm.

That was all to say that… after Sylas was gone, and the Monkey King's influence was erased, the Split Realm would continue as normal.

And the moment the next round of participants entered, the Runes that formed the foundation that was the Duchess, and also her brother, would be triggered.

Once that happened, Sylas wouldn't even have to be there. The Split Realm would reform them for him, and when it realized that neither the Duchess nor the Prince fit into its story, it would default to believing that the Duchess and the Prince were actually participants, thus slotting them into their own attempts to clear the Split Realm once again.

At that point, whether they got out or not was simply a matter of survival. Sylas didn't particularly care whether the Prince survived or not, but he was sure he would.

And after he had personally trained the Duchess, he was sure that he could trust her to survive as well.

There was only one question that remained, then. If he had done all of that, why was he still so sure that the Duchess would be here now?

Well, how exactly had the Duchess become trapped in this place in the first place? Sylas was pretty sure that the Monkey King had likely used a similar method. The difference was in the way he had integrated the Runes themselves.

So, the answer to Sylas was quite simple.

The Duchess would be here because she would choose to be here.

The world warped around Sylas and Cassarae, and when their vision cleared, up ahead, there sat a woman on a throne. Chains bound her, wrapped around her torso and arms, splitting her breasts and pressing against her curves as though more to accentuate them than to keep her bound.

Her expression was completely deadpan when Sylas and Cassarae appeared, the hidden depths of eyes that were a surprising depth of crimson staring back in ways that were completely unreadable.

Sylas' gaze, however, was much the same.

"She looks like she has something shoved up her ass." Cassarae suddenly said.

The Duchess' lip twitched for a moment and then her cherry lips became a smile, quite a dangerous one, actually.

"I have not missed you," she said coldly.

"And I've seen too much of you." Cassarae said. "You know, your asshole winks a lot when you're having a good time. I was tempted to plug it."

BANG.

The chains rattled and snapped back as the Duchess tried to stand, but it failed miserably.

Sylas stood there in silence, realizing that those chains were very much not a choice on the Duchess' part. Now this was quite curious.

Just what had happened, exactly? The Duchess didn't seem to have come here to wait for him like he thought she had.

But in that case, how was she here?

Sylas looked up.