Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 383: A Long Overdue Encounter

Days slipped past in that same fashion, the destruction of the tower’s pocket dimensions continuing unhindered.

And on the third day of the continued attacks, the Masters of Sonerth and Uetera, Marric and Calhoun, finally arrived.

Miranda studied them from afar, noting that they had been empowered by an Aspectual Authority just as she had done to the werewolves Ulfur had brought before her.

With their arrival, events unfolded exactly as Miranda expected.

They first filed official complaints to Ulfur via the Millennium Council, but when no replies came, the Masters of Zagruetun, Gathiea and Yoatune added their voices, demanding that he open up Luabos and address the attack of the Proelium Tower.

However, that was the most they could do as any attempts to enter Luabos were barred by Ulfur’s Master Authority. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

It took another full day before Ulfur finally made his appearance, feigning surprise as though he had only just become aware of the situation.

When pressed on why he had done nothing while the tower had been under attack for days, he presented his prepared alibi.

He explained that he had been wholly occupied mediating between two of his universe’s most powerful intergalactic empires, an effort so consuming that he had deliberately tuned out all other affairs in order to focus entirely on them.

To prevent foreign interference, he’d sealed his universe, and his attention had been so devoted to that conflict that he could not possibly have known of an attack taking place in a distant cluster more than halfway across his universe.

His reasoning was airtight, and nothing the Marric and Calhoun said could pierce it.

They tried to pressure him further, pointing out how suspiciously convenient the timing seemed, but before they could gain momentum, the Masters of Lozion and Lollao showed up to back Ulfur.

Even though Haunild of Lozion wasn’t on speaking terms with Ulfur, she hated Marric and Calhoun more. What’s more, she had an official alliance with him, so she couldn’t sit back and do nothing.

She and the Master of Lollao argued that the matter was less a ’suspicious coincidence’ like Marric had claimed, and more the attackers exploiting an opening Ulfur had created by accident while handling his own internal affairs.

They made sure to emphasise the ’internal affairs’ part, a jab at Marric and Calhoun, who had lobbied for and pushed into existence the Proelium Tower that had allowed outsiders to intrude upon the internal matters of other universes under the guise of sanctioned mercenary work, destabilising what should have been sovereign domains.

Marric and Calhoun countered by insisting that their Haunild had no right to complain when she and the other Masters had profited from the trade routes the Tower enabled, and their universes had grown stronger thanks to the opportunities it created.

Their words were met with immediate resistance as the Masters of Iccypso, Kotania, Briuwei, and Chalrouwei showed up simultaneously and declared that whatever benefits the Proelium Tower once held had long since been eclipsed by its drawbacks, and its very existence was now nothing more than a liability for the entire cluster.

The argument escalated quickly, voices rising as accusations turned to threats and the tension grew thick enough that a fight seemed all but certain.

It was then that Kellam, Yoatune’s Master, intervened, proposing that since they stood against the Tower, they should bring forward the Millennium Council, which was scheduled to convene in less than a month, and decide the matter there once and for all.

Ulfur, though already aware that Kellam was now on the side of Marric and Calhoun, acted oblivious and also displayed hesitation, as though uncertain about the true current tally of the votes on the Tower’s survival.

The Universal Masters, opposed to the Tower, seized upon Kellam’s proposal immediately, accepting it without pause. Calhoun and Marric, however, pushed back against the idea, only for the dispute to be interrupted by the arrival of the Millennium Council’s Chairman himself.

The Chairman sided with Kellam, stating that the Council should indeed be moved forward and convened sooner than planned.

He declared that once Ulfur had concluded his handling of the ongoing Tower crisis, the Masters were to gather in the Millennium Council’s Station in the centre of their cluster to vote on the Tower’s fate.

With authority only he could wield, the Chairman defused the volatile standoff, dispersing what could have erupted into a battle outside Luabos.

Miranda watched this scene from afar with narrowed eyes, filled with a gnawing sense of unease. Something about the way the events aligned didn’t feel right to her.

That gnawing suspicion within Miranda only deepened when she noticed the shift in the destiny field.

For days, it had been expanding at a staggering pace, as though desperately compensating for the loss of cosmic energy caused by the Tower’s attack while simultaneously working to stabilise the towers in the other universes to lessen their energy losses.

But that expansion came to an abrupt stop, and even within Luabos, the Destiny Field began to retract, its presence receding instead.

Sensing this change, Miranda had Ulfur withdraw his forces as she felt the Supreme behind it was planning something.

With the heavy hitters gone, the balance of the battlefield shifted, and the leaders of the terrorists, realising that pressing further would only invite mounting losses, began to reconsider.

Bit by bit, they pulled their own forces back, the ferocity of the attacks gradually bleeding away until the conflict started to taper off.

It was in this lull that Miranda made her decision to deal with the thorn that had plagued her side for thousands of years.

A thorn she would have erased from reality had Richard not stopped her for the sake of using it to acquire more information.

As Ikerth moved to retreat from Luabos alongside the forces of Sonerth and Uetera, being pulled back following the attack, Miranda tracked him down with the mark placed on him.

’Calm down, Miranda. Don’t kill him immediately. Read his memories first.’

Ikerth was a target whose elimination was long overdue, but more importantly, a potential source of information. Having been present in Uetera alongside the ’unknown Supreme’ behind the Destiny Field, Ikerth undoubtedly knew more than most.

By capturing him, she could both rid herself of a nuisance and extract whatever secrets he carried.

Making that decision, Miranda warped her way towards the Capella Cluster, locking onto the fleet of two dozen battleships zooming through the vacuum.

◇　◇　◇

A fleet of 24 battleships shot through the vacuum of space, arranged in a sweeping crane-wing formation as they advanced directly toward the secret universal gate that would finally carry them out of Luabos.

Each ship carried the personal soldiers of the Dragon King, whose vessel led the formation, along with the Dragon Lords sworn to him, those he had gathered during his time in Zanerth, and the troops entrusted to him by the Neo-Extinction Legion Herald, Salenor, more than a month earlier when he was dispatched into Luabos to investigate the disturbances surrounding the Proelium Tower.

The fleet moved at full speed, determined to escape the universe before the forces of Luabos’ Master, Ulfur, could arrive, and as the universal gate came into view and their systems locked onto it, something unexpected occurred.

Waves of cosmic energy suddenly rushed across the fabric of spacetime from behind the gate, rising and collapsing like storm tides as they crashed into the fleet head-on.

The cosmic turbulence struck with immense force, overwhelming their warp drives and dragging their speed down. Several ships had their engines blasted apart in eruptions of fire and debris, bringing nearly half the fleet to a halt just moments before the violent waves of cosmic energy drove them backwards.

Inside the flagship, alarms blared as its defensive shields flickered dangerously under the pounding waves of energy, and the brow-skinned Dragon King leading the fleet stormed up the command platform, his red eyes blazing as he seized the rail at the front of the bridge and shouted.

"What is happening to the fleet?! I want a full report, now!!"

The humanoid dragons scrambled at their stations, hands racing over consoles as they worked frantically to pinpoint the cause of the sudden spatial storm.

"Warp drive failures along the starboard side!"

"Engine Pairs 5, 7, and 14 are down!"

"Unidentified spatial object detected before the helm...it’s...it’s stopping us?"

The dragons manning the scanners could hardly believe what their instruments were showing, but their liege’s thunderous voice snapped them back to their senses.

"Lock onto that object and identify it!!"

"Y-yes, Your Excellency!"

They obeyed at once, rerouting the radar systems to focus on the unidentified mass, but the instant they attempted to scan it, every system on the navigation panel overloaded.

Consoles sparked violently, monitors burst apart in showers of light, and several dragons staggered back in shock as smoke and fragments filled the bridge.

"What the—?! I want visuals, now!"

At the Dragon King’s order, another dragon quickly redirected the external cameras, swivelling the ones at the front toward the source of the readings and projecting the image.

For a moment, the feed showed nothing but the damaged front of the vessel, but then the focus narrowed, zooming in on a single humanoid figure standing at the helm where the structural damage was worst.

One hand was outstretched, pressed against the nose of the flagship as if physically holding the massive vessel in place. Then, a pulse of energy ran from their hand, and the remaining engines of the flagship instantly failed and powered down.

The figure slowly lifted their head, eyes locking directly onto the camera, and through it, meeting the Dragon King’s gaze as though the screens themselves offered no barrier.

Their voice then rang out across the ship’s internal speakers.

|There you are, lizard.|