Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 339: New Path

"WHA—?!"

Shock and confusion.

Those were the only two emotions swirling through Lapis’ mind the instant Jamie suddenly sank his fangs into her neck.

Not once in her 501 million years of life had he ever done this to her. There had never been a reason to.

As such, the possibility hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Even if she had considered it, Davina’s body was currently far too weak for her to react to the speed at which Jamie had moved.

Thus, she could only gape in shock, her reflexes lagging by a full second before she instinctively tried to push him away.

But the strength drained from her almost immediately, overwhelmed by the searing pain that tore through her soul, as if a piece of it was being violently ripped off.

It took everything she had not to scream.

Davina felt a significant share of the pain as well, and it was no less excruciating.

Unlike Lapis, who experienced it on her soul, Davina felt it in her physical body.

To her, it was like someone had torn the skin on her stomach from the inside, then dragged it upward, scraping it against her organs, through her chest, and all the way to her neck before ripping it out.

That was the only way Davina could describe the sensation.

A full minute passed before Jamie finally pulled back, his fangs leaving her neck as blood dripped from his lips and fell to the floor.

Some of it stained her neck and dress, but her body had completely lost all ability to move.

Both Lapis and Davina were left in stunned, breathless disorientation.

"Yuck...!"

Jamie’s voice rang in their hazy minds, and his next words made both of them flinch.

"Wow, I can’t believe you had something this disgusting inside you. Just how the hell did Amara even create this...?"

"Sir Jamie, I know you’re immortal, but that doesn’t mean you should go around putting weird crap like that in your mouth! Spit it out!"

"Haha, I wish."

Jamie and Rowena’s conversation reached Lapis’ ears, and through the haze of pain and disorientation, she managed to muster what little control she had over Davina’s unconscious body and lifted her shirt.

’...it’s gone?’

Her mind struggled to process what her eyes were seeing.

Where was the curse? She could’ve sworn it was still there moments ago.

She couldn’t sense it on her soul either. Only the ragged wound it had left behind, where it had already begun eating away at her.

Then, Rowena’s earlier words echoed in her head, and she slowly looked up at Jamie, her eyes wide with disbelief.

"...y-you...you didn’t...?"

Just as she asked that question, Jamie’s skin began to squirm, and then, bursting out from beneath his clothes, appeared the familiar curse mark she had carried for hundreds of millions of years.

It spread rapidly, drawing curved and twisted patterns, and within seconds, it had completely engulfed his arms and crept across half his face.

"Oh, that was faster than I expected."

Jamie remarked nonchalantly, right before his body suddenly went limp, like a puppet whose strings had all been cut, and collapsed lifelessly to the ground.

"...eh?"

◇　◇　◇

Within a dark void, there was a snake.

An extremely long serpent that swam through the emptiness at insane speeds, its power spreading wildly in every direction.

The snake was trying to find its way back to where it was supposed to be.

It had been abruptly yanked from its original vessel and dumped into this unfamiliar place. In response, it unleashed all the power it had built up, aiming to destroy its new host and escape, returning to the one it had originally been created for.

However, no matter how far it travelled, it couldn’t find the root of this new host. It needed to anchor itself to that root and build up power to obliterate it as quickly as possible.

But everywhere it turned, there was nothing.

Eventually, it looked downward and moved in that direction until it collided with some kind of surface.

This must be the root—it thought instinctively.

So, it began trying to burrow its existence into that surface, to begin the power accumulation process. But no matter how hard it tried, the surface didn’t budge.

It was then that a booming voice echoed across the darkness.

"Oh, that’s where you are. You were so small, I didn’t notice you."

Instantly, the surface the snake had been trying to pierce began to rise at an incredible speed, lifting it upward.

And that was when it understood.

It was already inside the root it had been seeking. It was just far too small to comprehend the scale.

What it had been slithering across all this time... was merely the tip of a finger.

It had been crawling across the tip of the index finger of Jamie’s spiritual manifestation within his Soul Realm.

He looked down at the manifestation of the curse that had tormented Lapis for millions of years, now nothing more than a speck on the tip of his finger.

Then, he brought his thumb over it and crushed it.

Though Jamie’s body and energy core had lost the power they once held, the level of his Soul hadn’t diminished in the slightest.

That was why re-ascending the realms of power was so easy for him. It was as if his Soul, still far above, was pulling the rest of Major Existential Aspects upward to match its level.

And with the immense power of his soul, he obliterated the malignant curse that had been tormenting Lapis, having allowed it to kill his body just so it would focus its full power on his soul.

With that done, Jamie shifted his attention to the rest of his Soul Realm.

In Lapis’ case, her Soul Realm resembled her Domain. It was an endless Ocean beneath the light of a massive Moon resting on the horizon.

Jamie’s, however, was a stark contrast.

It was dark, completely devoid of light.

At least half of it was.

Half of Jamie’s Soul Realm was pure void, while the other half was an infinite, ever-expanding vacuum of space, dotted with radiant stars and swirling galaxies.

The infinite void and boundless space each occupied half of his soul, perfectly balanced as they orbited the central core, an area that, strangely, contained neither void nor spatial power.

The Core of Jamie’s Soul contained not a single trace of his two primary powers.

It was simply... empty, wrapped in dense layers of cosmic energy.

Beyond those layers, a scar was visible on Jamie’s soul core. It was a mark from a wound that had healed hundreds of millions of years ago, inflicted when he had deliberately severed his own ascension path to greater power.

Jamie gazed at it with a sigh.

’I ’declared’ my existence, filled my soul with Void, yet I never saw something so obvious. Everything came from the same source...’

He sighed again and looked away.

"Good thing I made that bet with Ranus. With what I’ve gained, it just might be possible."

This time, without a doubt, Jamie was certainly going to achieve it.

Not the False he had nearly reached before.

"I will definitely attain True Ultimate."

With that silent declaration, Jamie returned his consciousness to his body.

◇　◇　◇

Jamie’s eyes fluttered open to find two twin mountain peaks obstructing his view of the sky.

"Oh, this is quite the sight for sore eyes."

At his words, a familiar face came into view, purple hair falling over it as the person leaned forward.

"What’s a sight for sore eyes?"

"You are," Jamie replied.

Hearing his instant response, Miranda merely raised an eyebrow, then shrugged.

Jamie could tell that he was still on Anadus Prime, lying on the roof of the building where he had collapsed.

For some reason, his head was resting on Miranda’s lap—not that he minded.

Before he could say anything else, Miranda called out his name...his full name.

"Jamie Franklin Westley."

"?!"

The man instinctively flinched.

"What’s this I hear about you sinking your fangs into a young girl?"

"Hold the fuck up, Mira! Don’t make that sound weirder than it is! I was just trying to deal with Lapis’ curse, okay?!"

"No matter how you spin it, you literally sunk your fangs into a c—"

"I QUITE LITERALLY EXTRACTED THE CURSE PLAGUING THE GRANDCHILD OF A FRIEND FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS!"

"Pfft! Bahahahaha!"

Miranda couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer at how vehemently Jamie denied her accusation.

"Woman, you called me by my government name. How was I supposed to know you were messing around?"

Miranda simply laughed at his question, but eventually, her laughter faded, and her expression turned serious.

"You’ve reached Primogenial, huh?"

"Yep. That thing yielded quite a bit of EXP. Thanks to it, I was able to properly absorb the power of the Aspect fragment I got from Kaelithis.

When I absorb the power from the Amphitheatre, reaching Phantasmal or higher should be a walk in the park."

"That’s good..." Miranda replied with a faint smile, clearly pleased to hear his power recovery was going well.

Still, it was quite far from where it once had been.

Beyond the Deity Realms that he had already surpassed lay the Primogenial, Phantasmal, Law Echo, Assimilation, and Firmament Realms before reaching Quasi Supreme, where Miranda and most of the other Hybrids were.

Having already surpassed these Realms before, Jamie didn’t need to spend years navigating their unique advancement procedures and could just bulldoze through them by accumulating raw energy.

Still, it was a significant amount of progress considering it had only been a year.

Jamie didn’t mind, though.

Losing his power had given him the chance to restructure a few things during his restoration, and make some adjustments that would make surpassing his previous peak easier.