Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 388: Predatory Instinct

’Supernova: Celestial Ignition.’

Her Unique Authority activated as her sword sliced through space, severing the Supreme’s arm once again in an upward arcing slash, then she quickly traced a small parabola and swung down on his other arm driving toward her torso.

’Aspect of Blood: Haemorrhage + Blood Boil. Violet Inferno: Violet Blaze.’

With the simultaneous activation of Aspects, her blade descended on his arm in a single slash that split the limb into three separate sections, each one lighting up in violet flames that consumed his flesh.

|!!|

The Devil Supreme’s eyes widened in shock and he instantly activated his Dictum of Chronos to skip through time and return himself to the position in space he’d occupied moments before Miranda attacked, but just as he reappeared, Miranda closed the distance, her sword thrusting straight through his reformed right arm which he raised before his upper body and piercing his neck behind it.

There was barely a second’s delay before her other hand, clenched into a fist, crashed into the side of his face along with a thunderclap of purple flames that instantly scarred the side of his head, burning away his skin and charring the flesh beneath.

The Devil’s body was hurled through entire galaxies, blotting out stars and planets as he smashed through the pocket dimensions of the Proelium Tower, before finally coming to a halt when his back slammed into one of the dimensional barriers at the centre of the tower of pocket dimensions.

If the pocket dimensions could be likened to leaves on a tree, then he’d been driven straight through the tree’s branches and into its trunk.

’Ugh!’

Blood poured from his mouth as he pulled his hand forward, quickly yanking out the sword lodged in his neck that was causing his blood to boil, but as he tried to reform his left arm to remove the sword from his right, his eyes widened in grim realisation.

’I can’t restore my arm!’

The power of Miranda’s Third Concretization that destroyed his arm was stronger than the Dictum he was using to try to restore it.

Even worse, Miranda wasn’t giving him the chance to try breaking her Concretization’s Authority, as the moment he realised he couldn’t restore his arm, she was already within melee range, her fist shooting straight for his face.

In the split-second before her punch connected, the Devil’s eyes glowed red, cosmic energy erupting from him as he drew on the power of the faint giant bloodline he possessed alongside another racial Aspect.

|Aspect of the Devil: Straga’s Arms!|

His body expanded to several hundred times its original size, his remaining arm gaining immense muscle mass and becoming disproportionately large even compared to his now star-sized body.

The Supreme moved with speed uncharacteristic of his massive frame, appearing behind Miranda and swinging his leg in a kick aimed at smashing her small body to pieces.

But Miranda spun around, her hand coated in cosmic energy as it swung through space and fractured it like delicate glass under crushing pressure.

The space ruptured to reveal a timeless dimension filled with nothing but colours writhing in chaos, hues endlessly twisting and swirling.

|!|

The Supreme’s eyes widened mid-kick as he clearly saw reality splinter and a colossal arm engulfed in violet energy rise from within, mirroring Miranda’s motion and completely stopping his kick.

**KABOOOM!!

The shockwave from the collision tore through several thousand pocket dimensions in an instant, darkening the entire galaxy for a moment until only the glow of his colossal form and the flaming arm blocking his strike remained.

Miranda spun forward as if flipping in space, and space fractured further as a giant leg formed and crashed down on the Devil Supreme’s head, driving him downward with another devastating impact.

Her eyes tracked him as he tore through spacetime at faster-than-light speeds, and she shot after him, instantly closing the gap and stretching out her hand, the colossal flaming arm mirroring her movement and seizing the Devil Supreme’s leg.

It held tight as Miranda spun her body, swinging her arm, and the Devil Supreme’s massive body was hurled with tremendous force, smashing through several supergiant stars that dwarfed even his size.

Naturally, the Supreme took no damage from the kilo-novae this created, but Miranda hadn’t expected him to.

’Violet Inferno: Ember Storm + Blaze Barrage.’

With the transformation of her ’Violet Inferno’ Unique Series Skill into an ’Aspect’, what had once been her ’Skill Techniques’ had become ’Aspectual Techniques’, and the damage they dealt was on an entirely different scale.

Space fractured all around as what looked like flaming stars rained down from above her, and stretching out her hand, she unleashed a volley of explosive fireballs at the massive Devil Supreme, drenching him in fiery destruction from every direction and forcing him to raise a barrier with his Third Concretization to defend himself.

’What the hell is this woman!? What the hell is that pocket universe of hers!?’

Those questions flashed through his mind as he recalled the swirling chaos of colours he’d seen when Miranda had torn open space, the chaos of colours born from the immense concentration of cosmic energy inside the pocket universe she created and carried with her.

For Supreme Realm existences, creating pocket dimensions wasn’t anything too special. At their level, the Dictums they’d formed were elevated to higher tiers through the development of a Sub-Edict that subtly or overtly warped nearby reality to align with the bearer’s fused Laws.

With that degree of power, it wasn’t difficult for one to use cosmic energy to bend reality and generate multi-dimensional personal spaces or domains overlapping with the main reality depending on one’s dimensionality, which were most often used as advanced Inventories or Subspaces where they stored objects and maintained complete control.

That much, the man understood.

But Miranda’s pocket universe was filled entirely with cosmic energy, dense clusters of multicoloured cosmic energy gathering into that chaotic swirl of colours that would make anyone whose existence couldn’t orient beyond three dimensions dizzy just from looking at it.

Her pocket universe wasn’t a storage space or personal domain but a battery of raw, condensed cosmic energy, and she was wielding that cosmic energy like an extension of her own body, the colossal flaming limbs created from it mirroring her physical body’s movements without even a microsecond of lag.

She called it her Cosmic Hearth, and believe it or not, its existence came from several of Miranda’s Authorities, not anything on the level of an Aspect.

An Authority of Space to create and maintain the extra-dimensional pocket that was the Hearth. Containment was used to keep the volatile cosmic energy stable and sealed. Transmutation to convert the stored energy into usable forms instantly. Amplification to boost the potency of energy as it left the Hearth. Synchronisation to let the Hearth’s energy move in perfect harmony with her body.

With just a glance, the Devil Supreme gauged how much cosmic energy was stored inside that thing, something Miranda had most likely, no, definitely created because she was a Sub-Cosmic Being who couldn’t possess internal cosmic energy.

’That thing has more energy than I do! A battle of attrition would only end in my loss!’

He reached that conclusion as he activated his Dictum of Chronos, halting the flow of time and the movements of everything through space, including Miranda’s barrage of attacks, then accelerating his own movements to escape their range.

But just as he broke free from the area of Miranda’s barrage, she blitzed in beside him with a punch that her Cosmic Flame Avatar conjured by her Second Concretization mirrored, its fist slamming into the arm of the Devil Supreme and blasting him out of the galaxy.

Miranda shot after him, but the Devil Supreme unleashed a burst of energy and fired a barrage of unending star-sized bullets of darkness, which Miranda countered with another Blazing Barrage from her Aspect, the two barrages clashing in a spectacle of explosions that lit up the vacuum and tore through Uetera’s fabric of space.

The universe groaned under the weight of their power as the two existences unleashed torrents of energy that tore through nearby galaxies, displacing hundreds of billions of stars every second.

’Fuck! Salenor! Ronric! Anyone!’

He tried to contact the other two Supremes in Sonerth and Lollao, but his telepathy wasn’t going through, and he didn’t need to be a genius to know Miranda had something to do with it.

|Dictum of Chronos: Prison of Time!|

His power coiled around Miranda, trying to trap her in an unending loop, but Miranda charged out of the prison of cosmic energy, her wolf ears and tail visible as she zipped through space, circling the Devil Supreme in an instant before driving an uppercut into his lower jaw that hurled his body upwards.

She outpaced him and spun around, bringing an axe kick down on his chest that sent him crashing downwards, the impact unleashing enough force to make Uetera’s Universal barrier begin cracking.

Also cracking was the Devil Supreme’s chest, blood spilling as Miranda’s axe kick drove him through several galaxies, through space itself and all the way back to the Proelium Tower, where he smashed against its trunk again, cracks splintering across the structure.

Just as his body slammed against the trunk of the tower with such force that it bounced back up, the next sound that rang in his ears was the declaration of an Aspectual Authority.

|Aspect of the Wolf: World Severing Claws.|

A colossal wolf claw tore through the Devil Supreme’s chest, instantly driving straight into his heart. The man coughed blood, the crimson liquid staining the purple-silver fur of the wolf, but he wasn’t dead, and Miranda knew it.

Now in her full wolf form, enlarged to match the Devil Supreme’s size, Miranda used the arm that had already pierced his chest as leverage to swing herself onto his back, her left arm clamping onto his face and wrenching his head to the side, exposing his neck, where she drove her fangs deep and began devouring not only his blood but all of his energy as well.

|GURAGH!!|

The Devil Supreme screamed, his body thrashing as he tried to strike at Miranda with his right arm, but with her current position, Miranda’s right arm, still lodged in his chest, clamped down on it and kept it from moving.

Desperate, he unleashed the full power of his Dictum of Chronos, a storm of temporal beams erupting outward, streaking through space at irregular angles faster than light.

Everything these beams touched withered into dust, instantly aged beyond its span, and as they tore through Miranda’s body, punching holes through her wolf form, torso, chest, and arms, the wounds closed over again and again within seconds, her regeneration refusing to stop no matter how many times she was hit.

Still clinging to him with an unyielding grip, she kept consuming his blood and energy until his resistance waned, his strength draining away with every bite.

At last, Miranda, having chomped and torn at the flesh of his neck until it hung half-severed, transformed back into her humanoid form and seized his hair before tearing his head completely free.

In the same instant she did that, a loud voice rang out across the space.

|Dude, what the hell is—huh?|

The voice stopped short, breaking off into stunned silence.

"!"

Miranda’s eyes widened, and she instantly snapped her gaze toward the source, letting slip a startled sound of her own.

Silence filled the space as she and Salenor, who had just arrived to check on the Supreme assigned to this Universe, locked eyes.