Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 435: A Clash of Wills

When two Fourth Concretization users activate Aspect Dominion simultaneously, they enter a state of reality-warping interference.

Neither can fully transform the environment to suit themselves because their ’Wills’ effectively cancel one another out.

That was the current state of the reality surrounding Angela and Julio.

If either of them so much as slipped for even a nanosecond, the surrounding reality would be dominated by the other, instantly granting an advantage.

However, that advantage was NOT a guaranteed path to victory.

At the Ultimate Realm, the focus of power returned to raw energy accumulation, much like what one begins with at the Bronze Realm, only now on a cosmic scale, with the addition of optimised execution of all powers and abilities.

The comprehensive measure of an Ultimate Realm Existence’s power was their Existential Magnitude, which encompassed multiple factors.

The first of these was raw energy capacity and efficiency, covering the total amount of cosmic energy one could store, channel, and sustain, alongside how effectively their powers were integrated and synergised.

In this category, the gap between Angela and Julio was minimal, with Julio holding a slight edge.

Considering Julio had been an Ultimate for over a trillion years, the fact that Angela could reach a comparable level of energy was nothing short of anomalous.

Then, there was Aspect & Dictum Complexity, the number, intricacy and interconnectedness of one’s Aspects, Dictums, and Sub-Edicts, which allowed for greater versatility and attack potency.

This factor could be considered as abstract as the abstractions that were Aspects. The number of Law Origin Cores combined to create a Dictum and the Uniqueness of those cores were two of the primary elements that determined a Dictum’s ’Complexity’, and when factoring in that by this stage they’d had more than enough time to create multiple Dictums composed solely of Unique Law Origin Cores and elevate them to the Grand Dictum level in order to coin Sub-Edicts that linked their unified expressions together, it was fair to say the result was a rough tie between the two of them.

As for Existence Declaration Integration, the degree to which one had internalised and harmonised their Existence Declaration with themselves, where higher integration allowed for greater overall output with lower energy cost, both Julio and Angela had achieved absolute harmony.

They didn’t just ’use’ their power, they were their power, with every action backed by the full Authority of their Existence Declarations.

In the category of Cosmic Influence, the scale of control over universes, dimensions, and realms, Julio possessed so much more influence that comparison wasn’t even worthwhile.

The title of ’Witch of Chaos’ may strike fear and terror into the hearts of many, the mere mention of it influencing their thoughts and actions, but the name of Julio, the ’Eternal of Death and Darkness’, held far more weight in the hearts of many more, especially those whose entire universes were governed by her subordinates and vassals.

Lastly, Dimensionality.

The level of higher-dimensional existence one possessed, granting more degrees of freedom of movement, perception, and reality control.

But for Superior Stage Ultimates in general, not just Julio and Angela, were virtually unbound by the count of spatial or temporal dimensions.

It wasn’t without reason that Julio could stop Jamie’s Sword, whose attacks guaranteed hits across all dimensions, with her palm, even if the blade tore through the multi-layered barriers around her skin and drew blood due to its raw attack potency.

That ’potency’ still mattered very much, as it was the reason why even at that level, ’fights’ still held meaning and Ultimate Realm Existences still had to do so, rather than simply ’wishing one another away’.

However, the complexity of such battles could reach a point completely incomprehensible to anyone below the Zenith Haven Realm, where one redefined the boundaries and limits of their own existence.

Julio’s act of sending a single feather toward Angela wasn’t powered by mere ’Skills’ or ’Techniques’, but by an entire system of laws interwoven across several Dictums, all activated simultaneously.

The same thing happened when Angela flicked her fingers and sent ribbon spears toward Julio.

Such was the same that occurred when Angela flicked her fingers and sent ribbon spears flying toward Julio.

To begin with, saying they were ’flying’ wasn’t even accurate, as the act of willing them and their impact against each other’s multi-layered barriers occurred so closely together that the distinction between motion and contact was effectively meaningless.

With every movement of Angela’s hands, strings of spell formulae curled around her arms like strips of ticket paper, activating together with dull glows and unleashing countless attacks, which the Eternal countered by either consuming them with the darkness in her palm or moving her wings like limbs to block or deflect constructs of cosmic energy.

At the same time, she continuously used her Conceptual Authority over Darkness to fight the ’Light’ generated by the ring of power around Angela’s wrists, which created a simple domain of light that kept the darkness of the surrounding vacuum at bay.

The display caught the attention of other Ultimate Realm Existences across the Multiverse, but instead of drawing closer, they all ran as far away as physically possible, having no desire to be anywhere near the two women duking it out.

◇　◇　◇

Jamie burst out of empty space and slammed onto the floor, the Galaxy Sword clattering beside him as his back scraped along the ground.

"Jay!"

Miranda’s worried voice rang out as she rushed to him, but before she could even lift him, Jamie burst into laughter on the floor.

The sight left Miranda stunned, and Jamie, sitting up, muttered, "Well, that went just as planned."

"Just as planned...?" Miranda echoed, confused.

Jamie rose to his feet and brushed the dust off his body, patting her hair lightly as he said, "Don’t worry. Julio just tossed me out."

At the mention of the name, Miranda’s eyes widened as she glanced at the rift marking the entrance to the trap dimension Jamie had created.

"She’s already there?"

Jamie nodded silently, and at that moment, Akari appeared, prompting him to turn to the Shrine Priestess.

"You didn’t touch that box, did you?"

He meant the one he’d dropped when he sensed Julio appear and attacked, and Akari blinked in surprise at the question.

"Huh? Wait, where is it?"

Realisation came a moment later, and she quickly looked back toward the dimension she had just left.

"I just so happened to drop it because of Julio’s sudden appearance," Jamie suddenly said.

Akari turned back to him with narrowed eyes, and he grinned mischievously.

"What box are you talking about?"

Miranda’s question made Jamie turn to her, his mischievous grin fading as he explained.

"We lured all those guys here with rumours of an item from the Previous Era. The thing is, the rumours weren’t lies. There’s an item from the Previous Era, but I dropped it earlier, and now it’s stuck in the middle of..."

Jamie trailed off as cosmic energy wrapped around him, Miranda, and Akari, instantly teleporting them atop the barrier of the nearest universe. Pointing toward his trap dimension, he finished, "that."

Just as his voice reached them, a black flash of cosmic energy ruptured the dimensional space, the wave of power reaching them even billions of parsecs away.

All existences below the Zenith Haven Realm within the trap dimension from the enemy Multi-universal Empires that Jamie and Akari had lured into it were instantly reduced to cosmic dust.