Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 433: Mindscape

When Daniella awoke, she found herself seated at the head of a long dining table, the room around it adorned very little, but any trained eye could tell that each piece was worth far more than its appearance would suggest.

She remembered this place.

It was the dining hall of the Cathedral Family Home back in the Mercury Galaxy, and she remembered often sitting in her father’s seat and playing head of the house with her siblings when they were younger.

After glancing at the room, she finally turned her gaze to the other end of the table, where one of said siblings sat opposite her.

For a moment, there was silence.

And finally, Daniella spoke up.

"...you could have broken out, couldn’t you?"

Her question had no context, but Angela understood what she was talking about even then. Daniella was asking about the time when she had gone to steal the power of the slumbering Jamie so she could maintain the seal on Angela’s soul.

"Why didn’t you?"

Angela didn’t respond immediately, and at this, Daniella narrowed her eyes and asked once more, "Why...didn’t you?"

"...It’s funny you’d ask that, knowing fully well what dream you put me in," Angela finally said, her voice as neutral as always.

Daniella’s expression turned confused for a moment, and Angela continued speaking.

"I tend to let my guard down around you. Which is why even though no magic you cast should be able to work on me, your spells still work."

Angela was admitting the fact that she purposely lowered her resistances and invalidated her immunities when it came to Daniella, something the other already knew, and had taken advantage of to seal her soul.

"You put me in such a sweet dream, and I don’t think anyone in my position would have wanted to wake up from that even if they could."

"What are you talking about?" Daniella asked, eyes narrowing. "I used a Serenity Inducement spell that would only show you what you wan...ted... the... mo...st..."

Daniella’s voice trailed off towards the end as realisation dawned midway, and seeing this, Angela raised an eyebrow.

"You of all people should know what I really wanted the most."

"...."

Now it was Daniella’s turn to be silent.

"Our family, complete and happy. My life, undisturbed by Chaos," Angela said. Slowly raising her hand and pointing at Daniella, she continued.

"And you, my twin, not carrying a ticking time bomb in your chest."

Daniella silently bit her lips as Angela spoke, and the younger Cathedral simply leaned back in her seat and asked.

"You put me in a dream like that, and then ask why I chose not to wake up when I had the chance? Well, clearly, I didn’t want that dream to end."

Angela willingly chose to stay in that dream, that illusion of the perfect life she wanted, even though deep down, she knew it was but a dream.

"Alas, I had no choice but to return to reality, and I awakened to find you in a rather deplorable state."

There was a faint note of irritation in her tone, so slight that anyone who wasn’t her twin sister would’ve missed it.

"I can’t have that happening again," Angela said, lifting her hand and tapping the table in front of them.

The table split down the middle, the halves sliding apart and revealing a straight path through the centre, a space that narrowed to nothing as Angela appeared directly in front of Daniella, her right hand extending toward the other’s chest.

"For that to be the case, I have to begin by taking this thing out of you..."

As Angela spoke, circuit-like runes spread across her arm, and it phased into Daniella’s chest faster than the other could respond, her hand closing around the Mercury Gem embedded within her heart.

"...and then remove you from the log of existences bound to ’Chaotic’ Death."

Angela slowly lifted her gaze from her hand to meet Daniella’s eyes, tilting her head slightly as she asked,

"What say you, my dear sister?"

For a moment, silence reigned.

Then Daniella, heaving a resigned sigh, shook her head and muttered.

"Do as you wish."

She didn’t have it in her to deny her sister the objective she’d pursued for millions upon millions of years.

Even more so when she, deep down, yearned to be rid of the Mercury Gem that’d loomed over her head for the past billion years, even though it was also the very thing that’d kept her alive all this time.

Daniella was sure Angela could sense those thoughts, but the younger Cathedral twin didn’t comment as she roused her cosmic energy, the runes along her arms lighting with a faint glow.

Space around them cracked and shattered as the mindscape collapsed, Angela’s full consciousness returning to reality, where her real body, its arm buried deep in Daniella’s chest, just like in the mindscape where they’d been speaking, tightly grabbed the Memory Gem lodged there.

Hundreds of spell circles appeared and vanished within a single second, and in the next, Daniella’s body was reduced to dust.

Angela’s expression didn’t change in the slightest as every atom of that dust was suffused with cosmic energy, recombining to recreate Daniella’s body anew.

A sphere of white light covered in hundreds of spell formulae written across its surface in pure black cosmic energy came into being with Daniella’s reconstructed body at its centre, and that was the scene Jamie and Akari arrived to witness.

While Jamie glanced at his watch to check the timer, Akari watched the scene before her with wonder in her eyes.

Right now, Daniella’s existence was being completely recreated, down to the most fundamental levels.

From the blueprint of her soul, her Existential Graph, to the Soul that served as the root of her existence, then the body that housed that soul, along with the energy cores that supplied the power needed for both body and soul to function properly and to fuel the Origin Cores within that soul.

To her, it was a fantastical process, one that differed greatly from the reforging a soul underwent during the Stages of the Firmament Realm, nor was it anything like the transformation that followed integrating an Existence Declaration into the core of one’s being at the Integration Realm.

Jamie had witnessed this process before with Miranda and had gone through it himself, so it wasn’t as novel to him, though it was still an impressive sight.

The amount of cosmic energy being consumed each second was egregious, but there was no fanfare or lightworks accompanying it, only a single sphere of power covered in incomprehensible spell formulae.

"The sight of Cosmic Magic never ceases to amaze us," Akari muttered.

Just then, her instincts warned her of danger, and she immediately coated her body in a layer of cosmic energy as Angela touched the sphere and adjusted a formula, triggering an eruption of cosmic death energy that rushed outward in every direction.

The sight had Akari blinking in disbelief.

"...do we have more than one Eternal of Death?"

"Of course, we don’t," Jamie replied, bursting into laughter as he understood the reason for Akari’s dumbfounded question.

Angela had entered the final process of the ’Immortality Project’, or as most would put it, the Hybrid Transformation—Conceptual Detachment.

"To think she can manipulate so much of the Concept of Death’s power..."

At Akari’s mutter, Jamie turned to her and spoke.

"Why so surprised? You don’t think she was called ’Witch of Chaos’ for nothing, do you? The Concept of Death that governs our Multiverse is Chaotic in origin, and before you is Chaos’ favourite chi—!"

Jamie abruptly went silent as his eyes widened, his left hand letting go of the box he held. He spun without hesitation, and before the box even reached the ground, he summoned the Galaxy Sword, grabbing it with both hands and swinging it with all his physical might at the space behind him.

However, that sword Jamie swung with all his strength, the sword capable of severing dimensions, was stopped dead in its tracks by a single fair palm.