Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 434: Defiance

**BOOMMM!!!

The shockwaves from the collision ruptured space and knocked Akari backwards. She skidded across the ground, her feet carving grooves as she summoned a staff with five rings hanging from both ends and slammed it onto the floor.

Cosmic energy erupted from her body as the bells on the staff jingled, and Akari’s eyes widened as she beheld the sight of Jamie’s attack completely neutralised.

White blood dripped from the fair palm that held the Galaxy Sword’s blade and fell onto the cratered ground, a palm connected to a slender arm adorned with a diamond-studded silver bangle at the wrist.

Shifting her gaze slightly to the side, Akari saw a woman dressed in a sleeveless, knee-length, close-fitting shirt dress, her curled hair as black as her dress, shimmering with countless sparkling dots, like stars scattered across the night sky.

Even with a flat expression, there was no hiding the flawless sculpting of her facial features.

The irises of her eyes, which were fixed on Angela, were an ebony black deeper than the darkness of space, surrounding a single shining star-shaped pupil.

Though she had just stopped a serious strike from a Zenith Haven Realm Existence, she showed no sign of effort and remained completely unbothered by the blood dripping from her palm, sliding across the blade, and onto the floor.

The box Jamie had released finally hit the ground, and seeing her, he couldn’t help but sigh.

Instantly switching his expression into a bright smile, he spoke.

"Julio! Long-time n—"

"Save it. I have no time for your antics," Julio interrupted.

Her open palm closed around the blade of the Galaxy Sword, and even as cosmic energy sparked from it in an attempt to repel her, she lifted the sword along with Jamie, who was still holding onto it, and flung him like a piece of paper, sending him into the fourth dimension and out of this space entirely.

Jamie tried to resist and anchor himself to this space, his hand stretching toward the box he’d dropped as he shouted.

"Wait! That thin—!"

"Begone from my sight."

Julio cut him off again, a burst of cosmic energy breaking his dimensional anchor and expelling him from the dimension.

She closed her wounded palm and then reopened it, the cut from the Galaxy Sword silently devoured by the darkness seeping from her hand as she spoke.

"I have no desire to lay a hand on one of Roland’s priestesses."

Her left eye darted toward Akari, and in a cold voice, she ordered.

"Leave. Before I make you."

Akari silently unsummoned her staff, raising her hands in surrender as she teleported out of the dimension.

It was only after she left that the Eternal of Death and Darkness turned her gaze toward Angela, who had been quietly adjusting the spell formulae on the sphere around Daniella, completely unbothered by what had just occurred before her.

"When Akasha said you were snooping around in the Origin Multiverse, I initially didn’t plan to pay him any mind, but I’m glad I changed that decision and stayed on guard," Julio said, bringing her now-uninjured hand down to her side as she spoke.

It had been stated many times before, but Angela had stolen a portion of the Conceptual Authority of Knowledge from the Eternal who governed it, Akasha, and with her awakening, that previously dormant Authority Fragment would become active and alert Akasha to Angela’s return.

Akasha had informed Julio of this, and Julio had been on guard, just in case Angela attempted anything, which was why she’d appeared the instant Angela began the conceptual detachment process.

"At this point, you have to be doing this just to provoke me, aren’t you?"

Finally, Angela raised her gaze from Daniella’s sphere, one eyebrow lifting as she spoke.

"Provoke you? Do you really think I have nothing better to do with my time?"

"I’m beginning to think you don’t," Julio replied, stepping forward.

Immediately, the multi-layered cosmic energy wards Angela had placed around her died.

Make no mistake. They didn’t crack, shatter, or dissolve.

They died.

Beneath Daniella’s sphere, a magic circle with twelve concentric rings expanded, absorbing immense amounts of cosmic energy as it did, but Julio kept walking forward, each ring cracking as the barriers they generated died.

"Did you really think I was just going to stand by and let you do as you please?"

At Julio’s words, Angela sighed, raising a hand to tap the sphere around Daniella’s body, which was now in suspended animation.

"You do realise trying to stop me would only create more of the errors you wish to avoid, right?"

Angela crossed her arms as she spoke, her amber eyes glowing before melting into a myriad of colours, ending with a captivating iridescent glow.

"Trying to stop you?" Julio asked, then shook her head. "Existences born bound by death are meant to remain that way until Death claims them.

You’re an anomaly. Your detachment from Life and Death was beyond the control of anything within the Cosmos, so I never really paid you much mind.

But then you had to try replicating what you are. And six times at that."

Julio sighed softly, pressing her fingers to her temple as she muttered.

"And it wasn’t just random existences. They were all beings with irregular powers. Beings with the blood of rulers, born with connections to the Void outside the Cosmos, beings born from you...the original anomaly, all of which caused very annoying errors in the Concept I govern, making my job a serious pain in the behind."

When Julio finished speaking, she raised her gaze, eyes dead calm as she declared.

"Yeah, this has to stop."

A pair of black feathered wings erupted from her back, feathers drifting in the air, and seeing this, Angela asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Stop? How do you plan to achieve that? I’m curious."

Angela’s tone sounded calm as always, but there was a taunting edge to it, one that Julio noticed and completely ignored as she responded.

"You’ll find out soon enough."

The instant she spoke, the floating feathers shot toward Angela like missiles, reaching her in a nanosecond, and what followed was an eruption of black light that swallowed everything within a billion light-years of their location.

All the static celestial bodies Jamie had put when creating this dimension were completely consumed by darkness, but completely unscathed was Angela, and so was Daniella, whose body was protected by the sphere she curled up in, its glow the only source of light in the surrounding darkness.

"Really? That’s it?" Angela asked, holding all the black feathers Julio had shot at her between her index finger and thumb, but Julio simply ignored her and snapped her fingers.

—Fourth Concretization: Aspect Dominion.—

The darkness filling the space around them began to spread as the surrounding reality transformed under Julio’s will, but just as the transformation process began, Angela activated her own Fourth Concretization, matching Julio’s and halting the change.

"Why’re you trying to conceal us? Why don’t you let everyone watch and see how you intend to stop me?"

With those words, the energy in Julio’s feathers that Angela held was drawn out to form a ribbon spear, and as the feathers turned to dust, a flame-like mass of darkness erupted from Julio’s hand, followed by a black flash that ruptured the entire dimensional space Jamie had created.