Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 437: Fury

"Azi Dhaka!" Julio called out, her expression darkening.

Reacting to her words, four of the six dragon heads turned toward Julio, a voice rumbling out of all four simultaneously.

|Well, hello there, Julio.|

The dragons’ rows of teeth glinted, a mischievous glimmer in their eyes, and Julio instinctively unfurled all her remaining wings at the exact moment the four draconic maws opened and darkness erupted from within.

The four beams of darkness merged into a single focused blast, immediately met by a multi-dimensional barrier conjured by Julio.

In that same instant, four spell circles appeared at the four cardinal directions around Julio’s body, and her shields disintegrated into dust. Three more circles formed around her left hand, disrupting her energy flow and preventing her from immediately recreating the barriers.

Julio unhesitatingly folded her six left wings in front of her, blocking the focused beam with them, black feathers and white blood scattering as the Cosmic Authority within the breaths penetrated her defences.

Her right wings moved like limbs, cutting through space and splitting the cosmic spell circles that had appeared around her body, while her right hand, coated with the power of death, grabbed her left hand to break the hex disrupting her energy flow.

Feathers shot from her right wings, piercing the centres of all the spell circles and the strings of barcode-like spell formulae manifesting around her, before she moved her right hand to conjure spell circles of her own to dispel the ten additional hexes the Witch of Chaos had placed on her.

It was only an instant.

But in that instant, Julio’s power was focused on defending herself against the focused Darkness breath from the Evil Dragon, who attacked her for amusement, and the thousands of spells the Witch of Chaos unleashed simultaneously.

The amount of cosmic energy she was channelling to sustain her Conceptual Authority over Death was reduced, and some of the barriers maintained by that Authority fizzled away.

This created a small crack in her defences around the Concept of Death from outside interference, a crack that many an Ultimate wouldn’t even notice, let alone be able to exploit, but Angela not only immediately noticed it, but was able to send a string of spell formulae through it.

Angela’s power slipped through the gap, piercing a hole in the remaining barriers and phasing through the Concept of Death’s natural defences as if they weren’t even there.

The sphere around Daniella’s body glowed brightly, and Julio immediately realised Angela’s intention, unleashing a burst of cosmic energy to push back Azi Dhaka’s breath while attempting to reinforce her Authority.

But it was too late.

By the time she managed to channel enough cosmic energy to block the influence of an existence as powerful as Angela, the Witch of Chaos was already finished.

All Angela had to do was remove the link to one existence among the countless bound by the Concept.

A task infinitely complex, yet also exceedingly simple.

Julio’s expression contorted into one of pure rage, black sparks erupting from her feathers as the light in her starry eyes went completely pitch black.

|You damned...!|

Cosmic energy exploded from her body in furious waves, obliterating Azi Dhaka’s breath and sending the dragons’ heads recoiling back toward the tear in reality they were emerging from.

The Evil Dragon, however, only grinned with delight, laughing boisterously as he dragged his enormous body into the multiverse, six different cosmic crests forming behind his six heads, a layer of light enveloping his body as he readied himself for battle, completely ignoring the item he had come for.

The power Julio unleashed eradicated everything within the vacuum of space between the borders of the two multi-universal empires, extinguishing the lives of the Zenith Havens Jamie and Akari had lured.

Cracks appeared along the barriers surrounding the nearest universes as they were ripped from their positions in the cosmic web, hurtling through space like leaves caught in a storm.

"Our work here is done," Jamie said, swinging the Galaxy Sword to split open dimensions, creating a direct return path to Zanerth.

"Get in, Mira. Julio’s furious now, and a furious Julio is not someone you want to be around."

Jamie spoke from experience, but just as he said this, a calm voice responded to him.

|Says the person who orchestrated the events that made her furious.|

"!"

Miranda turned toward the direction the voice had come from, but Jamie pushed her into the rift before she could see who had spoken, and as it closed, he looked toward the man, a wry smile on his face.

"Now now, Ranus. You can’t blame me for this. I tried to pick up Azi Dhaka’s box, but Julio kicked me out before I could. Since it stayed there, it’s only natural that Azi Dhaka came to get his stuff.

As for what he did when he arrived, well, that’s not really under my control, is it?"

Jamie said the last part with a shrug, his azure eyes meeting the reddish-purple triangular spinning pupils of the man who had suddenly appeared in the space between him and Akari.

The man’s black hair was mostly hidden beneath a brown baseball cap, and he wore simple black jeans, a white shirt, and matching sneakers.

He, the Eternal of Space and Reality, Ranus, ignored Jamie’s words completely, not believing him for even a second, as he turned his gaze toward Julio and stepped forward.

A wave of cosmic energy rippled outward from his foot, immediately forcing the powers of the other three Ultimate Realm Existences back toward their bodies.

Reality warped, and the spatiotemporally displaced universes returned to their original positions in the multiversal web, reconnecting to their host cosmic nexus. The integrity of the celestial bodies within was restored, and the ’reality’ of the disasters that had just occurred within them was undone.

Azi Dhaka’s Conceptual Authority of Darkness was rebounded and overpowered, causing backlash against him. Julio’s power was pushed back into her body, and she snapped out of her furious state, her eyes widening as she recognised Ranus’ power, while Angela simply withdrew her energy and focused on protecting the sphere Daniella was inside.

At this point, Jamie and Akari silently took their leave, but Ranus didn’t spare them any attention, nor did he look toward Azi Dhaka or Angela, instead appearing before Julio as she muttered absentmindedly.

"Why are you here...?"

"Because any further and you would have ’killed’ this Cosmic Nexus and the universes attached to it," Ranus replied calmly.

A ’Cosmic Nexus’ was a focal point in a Multiverse, a crucial part of the cosmic web that formed a multiversal structure. To simplify, if universes were like clothes hanging on clotheslines, a Cosmic Nexus would be the pole those clotheslines extended from.

Each Nexus could have entire superclusters of universes attached, numbering in billions or tens of billions, and they dictated the spatial coordinates a universe occupied.

Julio’s ’little’ energy outburst earlier had dislodged all nearby universes from their coordinates, effectively killing anything below the Sub-Cosmic Realms within them. Ranus, however, had warped reality to undo that damage to the cosmic nexus, something he could do easily since only seconds had passed and because his Conceptual Authority was over ’Reality’ itself.

"I understand your anger, Julio, but you have to stay calm right now," Ranus said, his tone flat. "The damage is already done, so focus on preventing it from spreading further."