Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 370: A New Lead

Richard condensed an orb of death law energy in his palm and tossed it into the containment barrier, watching as the grey mist immediately began to gather around it.

"When laws are deconstructed, the process leaves behind an ’Echo’ of the law, just like the Echoes of Laws we perceived back when we were at the Law Echo Realm.

While running tests on him, I noticed that the deconstruction accelerates the more echoes it absorbs. But here’s the strange part..."

Richard looked up at Heilong’s body, using his Authority to make the dragon’s soul visible as he went on.

"The more Death laws this thing deconstructed, the more Heilong’s power against Death increased."

"...huh?"

Miranda blinked, glancing at Heilong’s soul and noticing that his Authorities seemed far weaker than they had been when she searched it.

"You say his power against Death increased?"

"Yes. Against."

Pointing toward Heilong’s Death Origin Core, Richard explained,

"When one comprehends a law, their power ’over’ that law increases. When this thing inside Heilong’s body deconstructed a law, his power ’against’ that law increased.

It’s essentially—"

"Comprehension in reverse..."

Miranda finished Richard’s sentence before he could.

"Exactly. Reverse-Comprehension to gain power against laws."

As Richard spoke, Miranda’s thoughts drifted to the attack on the Prison Realm.

There had been Supreme Realm Existences among the attackers.

What if some of those Supremes had possessed this power? Just like that Lesser Supreme who had been eliminated.

Worse still, they hadn’t been able to detect it until the dragon used it.

"This is bad..."

"Tell me about it," Richard replied with a sigh, cutting off the flow of law energy.

"And here’s the kicker. This thing isn’t technically breaking any cosmic rules, because even if it’s ’Reverse Comprehension,’ it still qualifies as ’Comprehension’.

It falls within the Cosmos’ Error Deviation Margin, so no rules are flagged."

Richard’s statement was correct. ’Reverse Comprehension’ was still a form of ’Comprehension,’ which meant the Cosmos didn’t raise any alarms over it, nor did the Concepts that governed its phenomena respond.

True perfection was an illusion, and the Cosmos inherently understood that, hence the existence of an ’Error Deviation Margin.’

Even the law of causality, often likened to the Cosmos’ police, had its own Deviation Margin, allowing one to tamper with causality without being immediately hunted down.

"If people like Heilong can be mass-produced in large enough numbers to form an army, then we’ll be facing a threat just as dangerous as Nothingness Manipulators like Jamie.

They don’t outright break the rules of reality, but they make them operate in weird ways."

Richard’s tone grew grim, his expression darkening as he glanced at Heilong and said,

"And I’m afraid I may not be able to learn much more about this ’manipulable form’ of pseudo-nonexistence."

"Huh? Why?" Miranda demanded, almost shouting.

"Because he’s dying. Granted, I’ve already uncovered most of what there is to learn from him, but the fact remains that he’s dying.

Remember, he suffered a fatal wound that destroyed his dragon heart. That little trick you implemented in the Prison Realm kept him alive, and I’ve also been using my power to extend his life, but stimulating the ’pseudo-nonexistence’ is killing his ’existence.’"

Turning toward Miranda, Richard shrugged.

"We could bring in someone with an Aspect of Life to try helping, but I doubt it would change much since his soul itself is breaking down."

Miranda frowned, unwilling to lose their lead, but before she could speak, her watch beeped. She glanced down to see an incoming call from Lillie.

[Reminder: Lillie is Miranda’s pet ’Butterfly’.]

"Did you find anything?"

[Yes. One of the Lieutenants of that lizard from Zotov.]

"!"

Miranda’s eyes widened at the reply, and Richard raised an eyebrow.

"Zotov? You mean Ikerth, right? Didn’t you already capture him?"

Given how much effort he knew Miranda had put into planning for Ikerth’s capture, Richard had assumed she would’ve gotten to him first.

However—

"No. He slipped away before I even started my move. Sarina said she spotted him outside the Dead Zone a while before I planned to head there to catch him, but since she didn’t know about Zotov, she let him go.

After that, no matter how much I searched, I couldn’t track him down again."

"That’s... troublesome."

Richard muttered, frowning.

Who knew how many Ruindeum weapons Ikerth had already supplied to the Neo-Extinction Legion, or how many more he still carried in his subspace?

Miranda had already cracked down on every planet and galaxy under Ikerth’s control, seizing every weapon she could find, but there was no telling how many had already been moved before her sweep.

"Send me the coordinates, Lillie."

[Already sent.]

Hearing Lillie’s reply, Miranda turned to Richard.

"Let me check what she’s found first. We’ll talk about Heilong later."

Richard nodded silently as Miranda warped space and disappeared from his pocket dimension. He then turned back to the dying dragon before him.

"The lengths people will go to for power..."

Shaking his head with a weary sigh, he walked up to Heilong and picked up a clean scalpel.

◇　◇　◇

Unnamed Space Region

Unnamed Qellimar Cluster Galaxy

July 12th

Year 2019

As soon as Miranda stepped out of the spatial gate, every Argent Empire soldier in sight dropped to one knee, bowing their heads in formal greeting.

She dismissed the gesture with a wave and strode forward, heading straight for the smoking spaceship floating in the vacuum outside the station.

The General on duty caught sight of a small butterfly resting in her hair and briefly thought it looked strangely out of place, especially with Miranda dressed in a pantsuit, her jacket no doubt abandoned on some couch.

But then the delicate wings fluttered, and his eyes widened as he realised it wasn’t an accessory.

The tales of a purple, butterfly-shaped beast serving the Argent Empress came unbidden to the General’s mind, and he gulped audibly, realising that what he had assumed was merely a decorative hair ornament was, in all likelihood, the shrunken form of that legendary existence he’d only ever heard about.

Such thoughts crossed the man’s mind as Miranda leapt from the station, landing on the open hangar door of the smoking ship before striding inside.

"How did you find them?" she asked.

Lillie’s sweet, melodic voice answered.

[The ship tried to flee the universe the moment we appeared, so we fired a jammer to disable its warp drive. Our initial goal was just to confirm Eldros wasn’t aboard, but instead, we found a Dragon Lord, a stockpile of Ruindeum weapons, and some other strange tech.]

By the time Lillie finished speaking, they had arrived at the holding area where the captured Dragon Lord was being kept.

Kneeling on the floor, bound in magic-sealing cuffs and power suppressors, was a horned man with messy red hair.

[He’s been completely unresponsive, but if you want, we can—]

"No need."

At the sound of Miranda’s voice, the man flinched and looked up, but just as he did, her hand clamped over his face, an immense flood of magic power pouring into him as she began searching his soul without the slightest concern for the side effects caused by her overwhelmingly superior existence delving into it.

"Gau-rugrgh!?

The man could only choke out pained groans as Miranda sifted through his memories, using specific keywords like ’Ikerth’, ’Heilong’, ’Eldros’, and ’Neo-Extinction’ to extract the information she sought from thousands of years’ worth of memories.

"Tsk... his body’s presence is slowing this down."

Her patience thinning, Miranda decided even the split-second delay caused by her power passing through his body was too long, so she proceeded to wrench his soul out of his body and search it directly while ignoring the terrified stares of the General and nearby soldiers.

"That’s rather harsh of you, Miranda."

Richard’s voice echoed as he emerged from a gate, his overcoat billowing behind him while he adjusted the cuffs of the rune glove on his right wrist.

"I don’t have time for restraint. Searching entire galaxies for a single signal is already enough of a wild goose chase.

Every second wasted raises the chance Eldros is gone without a trace, and just thinking about that pisses me off."

Her irritation was evident, and Richard could only smile wryly, noting how Miranda’s self-restraint tended to fray whenever her anger spiked.

"Let me take over. As you are now, you might end up breaking his soul."

He took the soul from her and added, "Cool your head a bit."

Golden magic power flowed into it as he used a specialised soul-searching spell of his own design.

He then used light magic to form projections of the Dragon Lord’s memories in a filmstrip-like display they could observe together.