Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 408: A Desperate Situation

Miranda moved through space as fast as she could, crossing several galaxies within seconds.

From what she’d gathered from the memory crystal Althalos had given her, the situation was an even greater mess than her siblings had made it sound.

In her absence, the Argent Empire had tried to keep the information about the Witch of Mercury supposedly possessing the Blueprint for the Hybrids from spreading, but they’d faced the same issue Rowena and Estea had encountered.

Supremes from other races had intervened.

Some believed the suppression attempts were proof that there might be truth behind the rumour, while others were simply after the supposed blueprint for themselves.

In the past, not long after the Hybrids became known to the public, there had been waves of kidnappings involving young werewolf and vampire children carried out by Witches and others who’d tried to recreate Angela’s achievement.

Even without understanding the process, they’d still tried to imitate it.

So what would stop them from chasing after a lead that might take them to the real thing?

If they managed to get the blueprint, they could create Hybrids of their own, free themselves completely from the Concept of Death, and maybe even discover the weaknesses of Jamie and the other five.

Those who didn’t believe the rumour and saw the chaos it could bring pushed back against the ones trying to hunt down the Witch themselves, and the result was the stalemate Rowena had mentioned to Jamie.

To Miranda, however, that stalemate was nothing more than the calm before a storm. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

She knew there was truth behind the information being spread.

The part claiming that the Witch of Mercury, Daniella, had worked on the Hybrid Project with Angela was certainly false.

Miranda had never seen Daniella once in all the years she spent trapped in Angela’s pocket dimension.

But the claim about the blueprint, that wasn’t entirely wrong.

Laura had been right to believe that Angela would never hand over such critical knowledge to anyone, but there was one crucial thing she didn’t know.

She didn’t know that Daniella was Angela’s older twin.

Besides her children, she was Angela’s last surviving relative.

That was why Miranda had no reason to doubt Jamie’s words about Daniella having the blueprint.

To Miranda, Daniella Cathedral was as much an enigma as her sister, Angela.

As Jamie and Sarina had discussed some time ago (Chapter 353), Daniella Cathedral was no immortal, nor did she belong to a race with the kind of longevity that could allow one to live over a billion years with only Monarch Realm power.

Even so, this woman remained alive to this day, leaving those who met her and knew of this fact deeply intrigued.

As Miranda raced toward Tau, she remembered the grave tone in which Jamie had spoken about the consequences of Daniella being captured.

She had always understood it as a matter of great importance, but after becoming a Cosmic Being, it had become far more significant.

There were only six Hybrids Angela ’created’. Five ’Complete’ Hybrids and one ’Perfect’ Hybrid.

And Miranda felt that number was already far too many for the Cosmos.

There was no way she was going to let another one come into existence.

After all, the materials that could be used to create the Hybrids were things any sufficiently powerful Race Emperor could obtain.

What most didn’t know was the method to merge those things together, and that was the information the blueprint most likely contained.

With what she now understood after unlocking the full extent of her Hybrid nature upon reaching Cosmic Superiority, Miranda would rather see the blueprint destroyed than allow more mutated Cosmic beings like them to be born.

It was not without reason that Jamie had called Angela ’mad’ after discovering this himself.

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Even if it wasn’t the power of the Hybrid blueprint, there had to be some secret behind the ’Witch of Mercury’ and her ability to continuously fend off beings of higher realms for months without rest.

Because of that, the Witches who’d once desired her hidden knowledge and had failed to capture her countless times in the past were now using this hunt as an opportunity to let others exhaust her first.

They tracked her through special means and kept exposing her location whenever she managed to hide herself, sending thousands of lackeys working for the Supremes after her.

There were a few problems, though, as the laws and powers best suited for trapping someone were completely useless against her.

When it came to restraining a target within an area, aside from restrictive laws and abilities, the laws of space, time, and creation were usually the most reliable.

Creating sealed spaces or pocket dimensions to trap someone was practically common knowledge, but that knowledge meant nothing against the Witch of Mercury.

After all, no spatial or temporal ability worked on her.

During the first chase, a Supreme Realm existence had tried to trap her in a looping temporal pocket, but the ’Witch of Mercury’ had simply run straight through it, completely unaffected.

It was as if she hadn’t even noticed that someone had tried to trap her, and in truth, she hadn’t.

They’d even frozen the space of the planet she’d been hiding on, but while beings far stronger than her were immobilised, Daniella escaped without a single hindrance to her movement.

This left the Supreme baffled, but they couldn’t act further before being interrupted by others, and there hadn’t been any direct interference from Cosmic Realm existences since then.

But their subordinates, though still far stronger than Daniella, had somehow failed to capture her even after months of pursuit.

The woman’s power appeared inexhaustible, and though she wasn’t a Cosmic Superior and shouldn’t have been capable of perceiving cosmic energy, she always reacted instinctively to even the slightest manipulation of it.

It was absurd, and even those who had technically been on her side by extension, since they were allied with the Estea, were starting to consider switching sides just to uncover what her secret was.

Seemingly limitless energy, several grimoires containing a compendium of spells from both within Zanerth and other universes, immunity to spatiotemporal abilities, and the power to unleash attacks with enough potency to repel Phantasmals and Law Echo Realms.

Who in the hell wouldn’t be curious about her secrets?

And now, everyone curious about those secrets had gathered at the centre of the Tau Galaxy, watching what would become the final showdown that marked the end of the wild hunt for the Witch of Mercury.

Why was it considered the final?

That was clearly because of the Witch of Mercury’s current state.

Millions of spaceships surrounded the light-year-wide planetoid, their starlights shining down on it and illuminating every corner.

Supreme Realm existences watched from within the folds of space, while their subordinates surrounded the planetoid from all directions, creating an inescapable net that not even a fly could get through.

Near the centre of the planetoid, weaving through countless explosions, was a woman with seven books floating behind her, their pages fluttering rapidly as multiple magic circles appeared above each one.

The moment the bombardment stopped for even a second, she turned and unleashed several magic spells in rapid succession, each releasing enormous amounts of magic power that clashed against the Authority-empowered techniques of the beings chasing her, using only brute force and raw energy to match and repel them.

Just as she finished, the space beside her cracked open and shadowy arms coated in death energy reached out to grab her, but she teleported instantly, reappearing several thousand kilometres away, only to be met by a colossal spider-like demon that brought down its sharp limbs, intending to impale her.

She blocked the strike, but the impact sent her sliding across the ground as she breathed heavily, blood streaming down the side of her black hair.

Daniella Cathedral was tired.

No, calling her tired didn’t even begin to describe her state.

She was exhausted, drained, and worn down in every possible way. Any description that could be used for someone completely at their limit would have fit her perfectly in that moment.

For months, she’d been hunted by millions, forced to face anywhere from hundreds to thousands of opponents every few days as the witches pursuing her constantly revealed her location time and time again with spells crafted solely to track her existence.

Any potential allies she might have counted on had been separated from her, leaving her cornered in the situation she now found herself in.

Daniella had already been wanted by several intergalactic powers before this, her name known across galaxies.

As one of the oldest living Witches in the universe, she possessed advanced knowledge of spells and techniques from other universes and even beyond this Multiverse.

Still, for all the knowledge she held, Daniella didn’t have the strength to defend herself from the reach of those vast intergalactic powers that coveted her knowledge.

Despite her immense knowledge, she was, as had been said countless times before, only a Monarch Realm existence.

She hadn’t gone beyond that level, having failed to achieve the single condition that would have allowed her to ascend further—she hadn’t attained any form of Cosmic Superiority.

Because of this, Daniella had been lying low for a long time, and even her decision to travel to Estea to siphon Jamie’s power several thousand years ago had already been a dangerously risky move.

She’d had no other option, though, because she needed to keep the thing in her possession sealed, or the consequences could be catastrophic not only for the Universe or the greater Multiverse.

Several werewolves, vampires, and friends of Jamie, Miranda, and the other Hybrids had taken action to help her many times.

They’d sent their subordinates to provide assistance, and those subordinates had actually managed to help her escape for a while.

However, the ones pursuing her eventually changed tactics, as their attempts to extract her from among her protectors by using battlefield removal abilities meant to separate targets from their allies failed since spatial abilities didn’t work on her for reasons they couldn’t comprehend, so they adapted and used those same abilities on her allies instead.

This time, they succeeded, managing to isolate Daniella alone on this planetoid.