Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 357: Unexpected Attack

"Oh... yeah... I did that..."

Jamie’s response wasn’t fooling anyone into thinking he actually remembered what she was talking about, prompting Sarina to facepalm and sigh.

’Is he messing with me? He has to be, right?’

At this point, she genuinely couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just playing dumb like always.

"Anyways!" Jamie said abruptly, raising his voice to force a change in the subject.

"Let’s find out what the hell happened while I was asleep.

As far as I’m concerned, the Vladi Supercluster has only ever had one Overlord, and that’s Roseborn Vladi."

"Didn’t you say the Overlord was the Vladi V?" Sarina asked, eyebrow raised.

"Yeah. Roseborn Vladi I, II, III, IV, and V are all the same guy. That bastard just keeps stealing his children’s bodies with his Unique Authority of Reincarnation."

"That’s messed up..."

Sarina’s expression was filled with disgust at what she’d just heard, and Jamie nodded in agreement.

"Anyway, that guy called us, who he thinks are Roseborn’s friends, ’Enemies of HER Majesty’, which means the new Overlord is a woman.

So unless Roseborn decided to change genders this time and pull off some absurd scheme, something major must’ve happened in this Supercluster."

Jamie wasn’t exactly on friendly terms with Roseborn, but aside from his disturbing habit driven by a thirst for longevity, he was a valuable ally.

A man who’d built an empire spanning tens of thousands of universes was far better as an ally than as an enemy.

Jamie reached out, pulled the unconscious Grand Supreme towards him, and extended a hand toward the man’s head.

"Asking questions would be a hassle, so I’ll just read this guy’s memor—!" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

His words were abruptly cut off as space shattered, and a bullet of creation law energy moving faster than light fired straight toward his head.

But it never struck its target.

The moment it neared him, space expanded, and Jamie turned, catching the decelerated bullet between his fingers.

Sarina, who had also been targeted, raised her hand behind her back and caught the three bullets coming for her, disintegrating them with death energy immediately after.

"Looks like this guy’s got friends nearby..."

Jamie muttered, eyes narrowing as he turned toward the direction the bullets had come from. His gaze tore through space, locking eyes with the shooter through their scope.

He began to rouse his cosmic energy to retaliate, when suddenly, both he and Sarina flinched, their eyes snapping upwards.

Without hesitation, they each shot off in opposite directions, a fraction of a second before the space they had just occupied collapsed in on itself, energy condensing into a vicious singularity that devoured space, time, light, and every trace of matter around it, sucking everything into the dark void at its core.

Did the Grand Supreme die? They couldn’t care less.

A moment later, the singularity violently expelled everything it had consumed in a massive eruption of cosmic energy, exploding with the force of a big bang capable of creating a new universe.

Sarina immediately raised her hand, conjuring a dozen walls of cosmic energy. However, to her surprise, her shields were effortlessly cut through by an incoming slash, and it reached her left palm, ignoring her durability and drawing blood.

"..."

The woman glanced down at her palm, watching it heal as her brows furrowed.

’Such a shallow cut, yet my healing wasn’t instantaneous?’

Her gaze lifted to meet the being now floating a few meters in front of her, eyes narrowing as she asked.

|Who the hell are you?|

In that same left hand, cosmic energy rapidly gathered, weaving itself into a grey spear entwined with a black and a white rope of energy that spiralled all the way to its tip.

Her eyes lit up with a glow, a blue ring of light forming around her irises.

The young-looking man before her glanced at the spear, then met her gaze as he asked,

|I should be the one asking that. Who are you, and why are you attacking a Guard of Vladi? Your answer will determine whether you walk away from here alive or leave as a corpse.|

At that, Sarina scanned the young man, then released her energy, dyeing the surrounding space in her signature black and white hue.

The cosmic barriers of the nearby universes began to fracture beneath the pressure of her power, and in a calm, almost indifferent voice, like she was stating a simple fact, she said,

|You seem not to realise that I’m stronger than you are.|

But despite her words, the young man simply laughed and replied,

|And I have a history of defeating people stronger than I am.|

With that, cosmic destruction energy erupted from his body, surging forward and colliding with Sarina’s own.

It was undoubtedly weaker in quality, significantly so. But its special properties, along with the Cosmic Authority infused, made it no less dangerous.

Sarina recalled how a single slash had slowed her regeneration, and her eyes dropped to the sword in his hand.

’Aspect Forging?’

He was using the same Concretization she had employed to craft her spear.

As the two stared at each other in silence, there was a sudden flash of light in the distance.

Sarina shifted her gaze, looking toward where Jamie was engaged with the other two who had arrived alongside this man, momentarily disregarding the opponent in front of her.

In that instant, the young man appeared before her, his sword slicing toward her neck, but Sarina calmly raised her spear and intercepted the strike.

Her gaze returned to him, and with a burst of death energy, she sent his body flying backwards. She spun her spear around her fingers before pointing it at him, unleashing a beam of black cosmic energy that would kill on direct contact.

The man swung his blade, the cosmic destruction energy within it cleaving through her death beam, and he responded with another slash before charging forward.

Sarina angled her body slightly, just enough for the destruction-laced attack to graze past her without landing. The lingering energy field his slash carried was neutralised by the veil of cosmic energy covering her.

Heaving a tired sigh, she lunged at him, her spear clashing against his blade in an impact that released a shockwave, distorting the space between them.

Their weapons clashed over and over, spear and sword meeting with explosive force. Each impact fractured the surrounding space, and every deflection sent ripples echoing through the expanse between universes.

Eventually, Sarina knocked the man’s sword aside with her spear and drove her knee into his ribs. The blow launched him backwards, and she immediately followed up with a downward slash.

Though he managed to block it, the sheer force behind her attack still sent him hurtling downward, crashing into the translucent barrier of a universe below.

The cosmic barrier trembled violently, cracks spreading outward in all directions, white light spilling through the fractures. The damage spread across nearly half the barrier, causing untold chaos within the unfortunate universe beneath it.

Hovering high above, Sarina aimed her spear and fired another beam of concentrated death from its tip. But just before it could hit, the man vanished.

The beam pierced through where he had just been, but then curved mid-flight, bending and realigning its trajectory the moment he reappeared at a distance.

Now hovering high above the universe, he sighed and muttered.

"...I suppose I’ll end up dead if I don’t take this seriously."

He raised his sword.

|Third Concretization: Aspect Armament.|

Cosmic energy flooded his sword, making the energy construct denser and intensifying its crimson glow.

More power coursed from his arm into the weapon, then erupted upward in a pillar of crimson-silver light.

The first surge of energy distorted space.

The second cracked it.

The third broke it.

And then he spoke.

|Blade of Extinction, split my adversary.|

He swung the sword downward, his slash cleaving through the incoming death beam, sundering it down the middle.

It happened in an instant.

There was no gap between the action and the strike.

In fact, it felt as if the slash had already torn through the remnants of Sarina’s death beam and reached her before he had even completed the motion of swinging down the sword.

And yet, despite that absurdly fast strike, Sarina blocked it.

Her spear morphed into a sword, which she swung upward to meet his attack, the two colliding with a time warping impact.

His destruction energy surged, trying to obliterate her death, while Sarina’s death energy responded in kind, pushing back with the intent to kill his destruction.

From afar, all that was visible was a descending wave of crimson crashing into a rising tide of darkness.