Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 439: War Begins

From retrieving Angela’s body to Jamie and Akari’s scheme to draw rival multi-universal empires and Neo-Extinction Legion allies into the trap dimension to wipe them out, several months had passed.

While Jamie and Akari were occupied with their plotting, matters back in Zanerth had already grown quite heated.

The war against the Dead Lifeforms had begun in full, with attacks launched by armies charging out from the Dead Zone.

Before Jamie left Zanerth with Angela, he had extended the orders he initially gave to Estea’s Vampire Rulers to the rest of the Race Rulers connected to Estea.

Zanerth was not going to confront the Neo-Extinction Legion and the Dead Zone under the banner of ’Races’, but under the banner of the various Intergalactic Powers they belonged to, cooperating to establish the ’Zanerth Intergalactic Accord’, or simply ’the Accord’.

Naturally, Jamie was the one who chose that name.

With that distinction enforced, Jamie had then blatantly told the rest of the universe’s intergalactic forces that they would serve as the vanguard against the Dead Lifeforms, while Estea would take the backseat during the early stages of the war and focus solely on rear support.

Of course, this was non-negotiable.

Richard released part of his research on the Dead Lifeforms to at least give them an understanding of the kinds of existences they would be facing, making sure to stress the presence of Inverse Comprehension and its deconstruction of laws.

As powerful as Inverse Comprehension was, it was not without limitations.

To begin with, a dead lifeform that Inverse comprehended the law of fire could only deconstruct the law of fire, and the same applied to water, earth, and every other universal law that existed.

"So basically, don’t fight someone who clearly has the power to deconstruct your main universal laws."

That was the line Richard had given to all the leaders of the intergalactic forces that made up the Accord, instructing them to pass it down to their combatants, all the way to the lowest-ranked grunt.

Naturally, identifying which law a dead lifeform had inverse comprehended before they revealed their hand was far easier said than done, but knowing this was still better than going in blind.

While Jamie was away with Angela, the Neo-Extinction Legion launched its first attack.

Large-scale evacuations had been carried out in the nearest galaxies surrounding the Dead Zone, and the Neo-Extinction Legion’s armies attacked when those efforts were close to completion.

The Legion’s vanguard consisted of normal existences, so conventional battle practices applied at first.

All the galaxies surrounding the Dead Zone were conquered and turned into Extinction Legion outposts, but this wasn’t truly an issue for the Intergalactic Accord, since abandoning those galaxies had already been part of the plan.

That is, until the Dead Zone continued to expand and consumed those galaxies as well, shrinking the buffer zone that had been created through their evacuation.

From the expanding Dead Zone came the next wave of Legion attacks, and this time, dead lifeforms were included.

Distinguishing dead lifeforms from regular existences was easy, since they not only operated in separate units, but also gave off an instinctive sense of revulsion toward regular existences that was difficult to miss.

As a reminder, despite being called ’Dead Lifeforms’, they were alive, with the name coming not from their state of being but from their origin in the Dead Zone.

During the Legion’s second attack, the Intergalactic Accord learned more about the dead lifeforms, beginning with the fact that when they were ’killed’, they didn’t leave behind any souls and instead faded into dust, leaving nothing behind.

This reinforced Richard’s deduction that complete dead lifeforms, unlike experimental ones such as Heilong and Ikerth, were disconnected from universal systems.

Upon death, they didn’t possess souls that bound conventional life to the fabric of existence and could be sent to the underworld dimension for reincarnation, but were simply ’unwritten’, with their existences erased back into pseudo-nonexistence.

◇　◇　◇

The second battle dragged on for several days, but not long after that, the Neo-Extinction Legion abruptly withdrew back into the Dead Zone, with the dead lifeforms being the first to retreat.

When Richard and Olivia, who were overseeing the frontlines, received the report of the withdrawal, they were taken aback.

"Why? They were slowly gaining the upper hand, and I was already considering sending some witches in as support," Olivia said, her expression filled with confusion.

Even though they knew of the dead lifeforms beforehand, their use of pseudo-nonexistence through Inverse Comprehension was still a serious problem for the Intergalactic Accord’s forces.

The corrupted magic power they wielded was another issue entirely, as injuries inflicted by it required several times the usual amount of energy to purge the lingering corruption before healing could even begin.

The Dead Zone that the dead lifeforms originated from was not true non-existence, but pseudo-nonexistence, a corrupted mirror of existence where certain rules of the Cosmos still operated, though in unstable ways.

Energies could still manifest within it, such as this corrupted magic power, which itself was an offshoot of the cosmic energy that permeated the Cosmos. Resonance from broken-down universal laws still lingered as echoes, but stable, structured, law-bound systems like the standard Existence progression and Authority acquisition were destabilised.

Because of this, the dead lifeforms could feed on law echoes, the remnants of collapsed laws, advance their power ranks through Inverse Comprehension, and wield corrupted magic power that produced harmful negative effects on regular existences of the Cosmos.

Olivia had her subordinate witches scour the battlefields after the Legion’s forces pulled back into the Dead Zone, checking the area for any traps, while Richard relayed these developments on to Sarina, who then had her Angels and Demons inspect key positions across the universe, including supply routes for The Accord’s armies and weapons production facilities, but no attacks or suspicious activity were detected.

"So the attack wasn’t a diversion meant to keep our focus here while they hit other locations?"

While Olivia and Richard were still trying to make sense of the situation, the dead lifeforms attacked again, targeting some of Olivia’s Witches and Richard’s Mages who were still sweeping the distant regions of the battlefield that stretched across millions of light-years, and the moment Olivia noticed, she decided to act.

Using her higher-dimensional perception to oversee the battlefields with ease, she buffed the combatants present, but even with the enhancements, she instructed them to maintain a lull in the fighting, not pressing the Legion too hard while also preventing themselves from being forced back.

That was easier said than done, especially given the unique nature of their opponents, which was why Olivia used her runes to grant them extra power to manage the situation more comfortably.

The battle of attrition continued for several days, and eventually, the Legion’s forces began retreating, finally pulling back into the Dead Zone, where the Accord’s forces, composed of regular existences, could not pursue them.

Richard, who had joined Olivia in observing the battle, immediately turned to his sister and called out,

"Olivia, they—"

"I know," Olivia said, cutting him off.

"They retreated after exactly 7 days," she continued. "Just like the first attack."

Seated in the centre of the control room within the command station on the frontlines, Olivia twirled strands of her long black hair around her fingers, her heels tapping the ground repeatedly as she pondered the variables of the battles she had been recording.

Because of how little they knew about their opponents, Olivia observed everything, trying to estimate even the average energy level of dead lifeforms with power equivalent to every standard Existence Realm possessed.

One detail she had noted was the duration of the first attack, which had lasted 7 days.

"Richard, the next time they attack, I’ll capture a few of them."

The woman had made her decision, and hearing this, Richard frowned slightly.

"Are you sure? If you take action, they might send stronger dead lifeforms, and our forces may not be able to retreat quickly enough to avoid getting caught in the ensuing fight. Collateral damage would be high."

Olivia frowned for a moment when she heard Richard’s words, but as she gazed at the giant clouds of grey fog swallowing rogue stars and planets in the space between galaxies, her frown disappeared, and she repeated her plan.

"It matters not. I have to capture some of them. Something tells me there’s more to these retreats of theirs."

Richard nodded silently, choosing to let Olivia work through what felt odd to her, all for the purpose of learning and understanding these dead lifeforms more.

After all, aside from the specificity of Inverse Comprehension’s Law Deconstruction and their ability to resist pseudo-nonexistence with ’overwhelming existence’, like splashing so much ink on a white canvas that the blank space is covered, they hadn’t discovered any other weaknesses of these dead lifeforms.