Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 360: The Overlord’s Burden

Rose Palace

Apex Superplanet Hodorix

Vladi Main Universe

May 2nd

Year 4,656 of the 57th General Calendar (Vladi)

The group had relocated to the central universe of the Vladi Supercluster and were now in the palace of the Overlord, which was named after the first to ever hold the title.

"Who would’ve thought you were the new Overlord? Never expected that," Jamie remarked as he sat on one of the floor cushion chairs arranged around the circular room, watching uniformed servants shuffle in to set down low tables and begin filling them with refreshments.

"If I let any of my siblings run this place, the Empire would’ve collapsed.

Being Overlord is a pain in the behind that I’d rather avoid, but unfortunately, there are people I happen to care about whose livelihoods would be ruined if this Empire fell apart. As such, I’m the unwilling Overlord of the Vladi Supercluster."

Alexia’s voice was heavy with weariness, making it obvious how little she enjoyed her current role.

It hadn’t been long after she appeared where Jamie was that an entire army of space battlecruisers arrived, carrying millions of armed soldiers and several powerful Supreme Realm existences who immediately rushed out to chide her for disappearing without notice.

From there, it wasn’t hard to figure out that she had become the new Overlord of Vladi, an irony, considering she was the next person whose body Roseborn had planned to take over.

"So, where’s Roseborn now? Did you kill him?"

"No," Alexia replied.

Jamie followed up with another question.

"So where is he now?"

"Dead," came Alexia’s second one-word response.

Jamie went silent at that, and Alexia continued.

"Just because I didn’t kill him doesn’t mean he’s not dead."

"So who did?" Jamie asked.

Alexia didn’t answer. Instead, her gaze shifted to the other side of the room, toward the other silver-haired man present.

That man, Arthur, was currently resting his head on the lap of the amethyst-eyed young woman he had introduced as Nicole, while she fed him one of the glossy grapes from the table in front of them.

Jamie silently analysed the strength of the clone, nodding to himself in understanding.

’If even a clone of Arthur is this powerful, then it’s not hard to believe the real Arthur killed Roseborn.’

Still, he was curious. Taking down Roseborn was one thing, but it shouldn’t have been easy to deal with everything else either, particularly the armies.

Roseborn had been the founder and ruler of the Vladi Empire for over a hundred million years. There was no way someone like that wouldn’t have a massive military force behind him, along with numerous allies among other multi-universal hegemons.

"How did you handle his forces and allies?"

Jamie finally voiced his curiosity, and Alexia responded with a calm tone.

"Well, I had my own forces that I’d been raising in secret. I also received help from some of Lucifer’s old friends.

There were a few... ridiculously powerful Ancient Dragons that came around to play, and I got a lot of my siblings who weren’t exactly fond of him on my side as well.

Lastly, I got help from one of the most dangerous armies currently active in the cosmos—the godslayers."

At that, Jamie turned his attention to Arthur.

"His army?"

Jamie had no idea how powerful Arthur’s army actually was, or just how dangerous they could be. But being labelled one of the most dangerous armies in the current Cosmos wasn’t a title handed out lightly.

Alexia gave a confirming nod, and right after, Arthur spoke up.

"You know, it’s actually crazy how a good percentage of my army—my godslayer army—likes Alexia more than they like me."

Jamie blinked in confusion. "What?"

Arthur nodded, chuckling at Jamie’s baffled reaction. "Yeah, I’m completely serious. They’re more loyal to Alexia than they are to me.

Like, when I brought up that we needed to head to her home universe to deal with her psycho, control-freak father, who’s been trying to take over her body for tens of thousands of years, I hadn’t even finished talking before they were already at the Spatial Gates, telling me to hurry up and get in."

Arthur clearly found it amusing, and Alexia chuckled as well, seemingly recalling the exact moment he was talking about.

"Well, considering the fact that she’s the one who freed them from captivity, many of whom were under the hands of gods, and actually gave them a life, it’s not that surprising they’re so fond of her."

A small mutter of his mentioned that Alexia’s help had been invaluable during the early stages of his army’s formation.

Clearly, Arthur and Alexia’s relationship went way back. Compared to Jamie’s lifespan, it had only been a blink, but for Arthur, it had been most of his life.

For context, Jamie and Arthur had first met when Arthur was still a teenager. It happened during Jamie’s most recent slumber, which he’d been awakened from by the Evangelista siblings and their companions just over a year ago.

As for how Jamie had encountered Arthur while supposedly slumbering, it was because he’d grown bored of dreaming, so he split off a fragment of his soul and sent it to a different universe somewhere else in the Cosmos, where that fragment lived as a Demon King for over 3000 years.

He only returned shortly before a certain witch came sniffing around his power.

One of the things he’d done during that time—tossing Arthur into an Infernal Dimension—was what earned him the punch to the face a short while ago. It was a grudge Arthur had held ever since his teenage years, though back then, he hadn’t been strong enough to actually hurt Jamie.

But thousands of years had passed since, and Arthur had finally gotten in his long-awaited punch.

As Jamie recalled the incident, he glanced to his left at Sarina, but the woman didn’t appear to notice.

Her attention was instead fixed on the man currently acting as Alexia’s steward, giving out instructions to the nearby servants.

Noticing this, Jamie’s Galaxy Sword, who, for some reason, had chosen to manifest in their humanoid form, remarked, [You seem surprised. Seems you didn’t know about this form of Chrono’s.]

And just as the Sword implied, the ’steward’, a man with a chiselled jaw, piercing blue eyes, and a perfectly coiffed head of dark brown hair, was none other than the humanoid form of the Chrono Controller: Alexia’s Rule Breaker, and the one responsible for bringing Sarina back to life after her death at the hands of traitors more than a billion years ago.

At the time, Sarina had discovered a fragment of the Chrono Controller in Zanerth, repaired it, and kept it with her. On the day she was betrayed and killed, that fragment had expended all the power it had recovered to rewind time to just before her death, then vanished, but not before speaking to her for the very first time and leaving her with a few words.

Since that day, even after Sarina had taken her revenge, become a Nephalem, and now ruled over the two races whose Kings had once betrayed her, she had continued searching for the sword, trying to uncover the truth behind the seemingly ordinary item that had once saved her life.

That search was what had ultimately brought them here, to Vladi, where the sword, having re-joined its main body, now belonged to Alexia.

Yet even after being reunited with its full form, it hadn’t forgotten Sarina, as shown by how it had awakened from its low-power state the moment she came close, immediately locking onto her presence.

Since deep space wasn’t the ideal place for any sort of conversation, let alone one involving billion-year-old questions and unresolved feelings, they had relocated to the Rose Palace, where they were now.

After addressing the unresponsive Sarina, the Galaxy Sword turned its attention to Arthur, floating toward him, eyes gleaming as they spoke.

[Hey, godslayer guy. Where’s Lostvayne? I wanna talk to him. It’s been a long while. Hey, Lostvayne, you can hear me, right? Come out!]

The latter part of their words was not directed at Arthur, but at Lostvayne, the Rule Breaker with Serial Number 3, just above the Galaxy Sword, who was the Serial Number 4.

Rule Breakers, as explained before, were all Ego Weapons of immense power, regarded as indestructible within the current Cosmos, and were weapons that had existed in the void before ’Space’ and ’Time’ were even a thing.

There were exactly 999 of them, categorised into Triple, Double, and Single-Digits based on their Serial Numbers.

The lower the number, the stronger the Rule Breaker, meaning that Jamie’s Number 4 and Arthur’s Number 3 were unquestionably among the most powerful.

As for Numbers 2 and 1, those two were treated more like legends. All Rule Breakers acknowledged the existence of Number 1, but no confirmed sightings had ever been recorded. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Number 2, on the other hand, had been sighted before, though it was known to be extremely reclusive, completely uninterested in involving itself in anything at all.

The rest were far more active than those two, and over the eons, they had passed through many wielders and collectors.

Jamie had come to possess the Galaxy Sword after its previous wielder, who, unbeknownst to him, had been one of the Ancient Dragons Alexia had just mentioned, had ’retired’ from the Cosmic Stage and dissolved their contract with the weapon.

Arthur’s Lostvayne had been passed down to him after its previous wielder, his great-grandfather, Devil King Lucifer Morningstar, was murdered by one of Jamie’s least favourite Eternals: the Eternal of Knowledge, Akasha.

So then, why was Jamie recalling all this mostly unnecessary trivia? It was simply to drown out the incessant chatter of the Galaxy Sword, which was now hovering around Arthur, repeatedly calling out to get Lostvayne’s attention.