Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 423: A New Threat

The damn fools had touched Angela’s reverse scale.

The Zanerth universe had a few weaker Envoys of Order, and they conspired with the foreign Envoys, enemies, and enviers of Angela to track down and capture her children, then tried to threaten Angela with them.

Emphasis on ’tried’, because the moment the trio, who were together, were incapacitated, Angela immediately sensed it and crossed the universe to smoke their kidnappers out of existence.

However, they’d managed to teleport the three away in the short time it took Angela to reach them, forcing the already mentally unstable Angela to leave Zanerth to track them down.

She found them within minutes, and in a battle that could have levelled Zanerth several times over, Angela completely annihilated the group and all the traps they’d set for her.

But she wasn’t unscathed.

The foreign Envoys of Order were all Ultimate Realm Existences like her, and fighting several at once wasn’t easy.

She had to summon some Cosmic Horrors at one point, which only worsened her already horrible state.

Then their Ordered Cosmic energy infected her wounds, forcing her to use more Chaotic power to expel it so she could regenerate the damage, increasing the level of Chaos’ encroachment.

By the time the battle ended, Angela was on the verge of going berserk.

That had been her toughest battle since reaching the Ultimate Realm, and she was at the weakest she’d ever been since becoming an Envoy of Chaos.

Chaos wouldn’t be ’CHAOS’ if it didn’t try to take advantage of this now, would it?

The Cosmic Force amplified the anger Angela felt and began turning her into its Incarnation, a vessel through which Chaos could physically ’descend’.

Her three children had witnessed the entire scene, even the parts where Angela stabbed herself repeatedly, trying to use the pain to stay conscious.

The ones who stopped the rampage, risking themselves in the process, were Jamie and Daniella.

The Jamie of that time wasn’t immune to Existence Erasure, so he was in extreme danger. Daniella’s life was being sustained by the damaged Mercury Gem embedded in her heart, which drew power from an opposing Cosmic Force.

Facing a near-berserk Ultimate Realm Existence on the verge of becoming an Incarnation of Chaos? Downright insane.

They didn’t even attempt to fight her. Their goal was only to use their special ability and failsafe on her.

Before Angela could fully lose control, Jamie, using himself as a Conduit through his Imperial Privilege’s Final Privilege, channelled the power of the Cosmic Force of Balance to suppress her berserk, chaotic power.

Taking advantage of the window he created with his Authority as an Envoy of Balance, Jamie and Daniella activated the failsafe Daniella had prepared for the possibility that Chaos succeeded in consuming her sister’s mind.

Its function was simple.

It separated Angela’s soul from her body, creating a break in the channel through which her Chaotic Cosmic Power flowed.

This break gave Angela a moment of clarity, and instead of manifesting an Astral Body through Cosmic energy to compensate for being just a soul, she used her own power to temporarily shut down her body’s auto-defences, allowing Jamie to apply Forced Equilibrium on her and complete the soul separation, creating the opportunity Daniella needed to seal Angela’s soul away.

It was an impromptu plan that wouldn’t have worked as well if Angela’s children hadn’t been present.

That was why, despite the danger, Daniella hadn’t evacuated the three to safety first and had kept them there, even if they had to witness their mother at her lowest.

Daniella remembered that even when Angela had ’killed’ the Mercury Galaxy, she somehow stopped short of killing Daniella too.

It was as if part of Angela’s mind or soul was simply incapable of fully ’losing it’ when any of her blood was present.

That repeated itself, and even more so when Daniella sealed Angela’s soul to prevent the Cosmos’ second Incarnation of Chaos from being born.

After all, if Jamie had been the one to attempt the seal, there probably wouldn’t have been a ’Jamie’ left.

He then handled her temporarily unconscious body, calling in a favour from someone to place it somewhere it would remain inert so the lingering chaotic power wouldn’t reawaken it and send it on a mindless rampage.

Originally, they’d planned to unseal her soul after some time, but to their shock, Angela’s soul was completely consumed by chaos even while under the seal, and if they had cracked it open even the slightest bit, it would have been instant GAME OVER.

Days became weeks, weeks turned into months, and soon those months had become years—all that time, and Angela’s soul was still in a sort of dormant berserk state, and should her seal be released, it would be instant GAME OVER.

Entire Cosmic Cycles passed, and Chaos remained a persistent bastard, which caused the prolonged sealing of Angela’s soul.

The Chaotic power, however, eventually began diminishing while they moved through the Multiverse, trying to find solutions without alerting Angela’s or Zanerth’s enemies that she was sealed.

The speed was slow, but it was reducing all the same, so they chose to let it gradually fade until it was completely gone.

As for her children, Jamie and Daniella were the ones who erased their memories of that day, a choice made because Daniella didn’t want her nephews and niece to remember their mother at her ’lowest’.

In the end, it took several hundred million years for the chaotic power to finally diminish to a point where it seemed ’safe’, and shortly after, Angela’s soul began to stir.

However, Daniella feared it might not be ’safe enough’ yet, and because of this, she ended up siphoning Jamie’s power to forcefully maintain the seal.

◇　◇　◇

The sound of Jamie quietly munching on his popcorn was the only noise that broke the heavy silence in the room, accompanied only by the slow, steady ticking of the clock on the wall.

Having already known everything that had just been revealed, Jamie wasn’t surprised, stunned, or shaken like the others.

He kept eating his popcorn while the rest sat in silence, though after a while, Miranda nudged him with her elbow.

"Jamie. Stop it," she whispered with narrowed eyes.

It almost felt as if he was making noise on purpose.

Before he could claim that he was, in fact, NOT doing it on purpose, space suddenly warped to form a Cosmic Gate in the centre of the room, and Sarina stepped out with a grave expression.

"I don’t know what you’re all talking about," she said breathlessly, "but whatever it is, you need to drop it. Something big just happened."

At this, Jamie crossed his legs and said, "Sarina, these three just learned about their mother’s hidden story and the truth behind what’s without a doubt the greatest tragedy of their lives.

What could possibly be more important right now?"

Sarina turned to him, not bothering with his antics, and went straight to the point.

"You were right. It was all a distraction. We missed the real goal because we were too focused on this whole Bounty Hunting mess and..."

Turning to Daniella, she pointed and continued, "Her. The Bounty Hunting, the Witch Hunt, everything. It was all a diversion."

She paused to catch her breath, and Jamie, now realising the situation was far more serious than he’d assumed, narrowed his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked.

Sarina’s answer made the bag of popcorn slip from his hand and scatter across the floor.

"The Dead Zone just expanded."

◇　◇　◇

Beyond the Bloodline Volume 3: Last Witches of Mercury—END

♧ ♧ ♧

Hey y’all, it’s your friendly neighbourhood author, _michael here. 👋🏽

Volume 3’s Chapter has come to a close.

It’s shorter than Volumes 1 and 2 by nearly 100 Chapters each, but I guess that’s what tends to happen as a story nears its end.

If you felt Volume 3 was short, brace yourself—Volume 4 only has 2 Arcs.

It’s also the final volume of the book.

There are going to be two Interludes, or Interim Chapters, I’m not sure what to call them, but they’re very important to the story, and you should NOT skip them.

After that, we’ll dive straight into Volume 4. No teaser this time.

Thanks for your understanding, and I look forward to you continuing on the last lap of our Hybrid’s journey.

This has been _michael.

Over and Out! ✌🏽