Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 172: Miasma Swamp

The lush canopy of trees, once full of life, withered and turned into a sickly black. The vibrant foliage rotted into twisted, gnarled forms, their branches stretching like skeletal fingers towards the sky.

The ground transformed into a miasma-swamped wasteland, the asphalt cracking as the noxious vapours seeped onto the road. A grotesque black ooze oozed from the undergrowth, spreading like a creeping plague, its miasmic tendrils encroaching upon the road with an almost sentient malevolence.

From this corrupt swamp, monsters began to emerge, their forms grotesque and malformed.

Their eyes glowing with a fierce, blood-red rage, they surged from the muck, driven by an insatiable hunger to destroy anything in their path.

The beasts were a menagerie of nightmarish visages—scaly horrors with dripping fangs, hulking abominations with gnarled limbs, and slithering serpents with eyes like burning coals.

It was as if each one was a mishmash of normal monsters, forcefully put together and let loose.

At the sight of this, the young Hybrid remained unmoved. He simply yawned before leaping off the car roof and dashing into the sea of frenzied monsters.

The monsters naturally saw him as prey, ever so eager to rip him apart with their fangs and claws. Some of the monsters, chimeric mixes of land and sea-based creatures had long tentacles that lunged at him with the intention of squeezing him to death.

However, none of these appendages ever reached him.

With a flick of his wrist, Jamie unleashed a wave of slicing energy that cleaved through the nearest monsters, unceremoniously splitting their grotesque forms into unequal halves.

As the light went out of the eyes of the first wave, the second wave roared loudly and attacked with venomous bites.

One particularly massive boar-shaped three-headed monster, bearing the heads of a lion and a cheetah on either side of its horned boar head, charged at Jamie with its maw gaping wide.

Breaths of miasma and ice spewed from its peripheral heads while the main one tried to impale him with its horns.

In the face of this, Jamie sidestepped the monster’s charge, creating a wormhole to absorb the attack of the cheetah’s head that turned towards his direction to spew an ice breath.

The wormhole pulsed and then vanished, the monster’s attack dissipating harmlessly into the void.

From behind, a winged serpent lashed out with its spiked tail and his sword flashed, releasing a slash of spatial power that severed the tail of the serpent and elicited a cry of pain.

"I don’t like snakes so I’d kill you first."

With such a reason behind his actions, Jamie vanished and reappeared behind the flailing winged serpent, swinging his blade to relieve it of its flight appendages, before stabbing it through the wound.

He infused magic power into his sword and spoke a command.

"Explode."

The magic surged from Jamie’s blade and into the body of the serpent, before erupting in an explosion of azure flames that sent pieces of flesh flying in all directions.

Raising his head, he switched skills and the searing flames enveloping his blade turned to tendrils of crackling lightning arcing with fierce intensity.

Jamie faced the monstrous three-headed boar charging at him with wild abandon, tusks gleaming menacingly. The creature lunged at the same moment that he swung the blade downward in a sweeping arc.

The strike was precise and devastating, cleaving through the boar’s thick hide with ease and splitting its middle head and the rest of its body with a clean cut.

The lightning released from his slash carried on, carving a path of destruction through the hordes of monsters. It split dozens of monsters in twain, creating a macabre spray of blood and gore that seeped into the miasma on the floor.

After reducing the horde of monsters to a chaotic mess of dismembered limbs and torn flesh, Jamie waved his hand and summoned azure flames that roared to life, engulfing the corpses in an instant and turning them to ashes within seconds.

"That’s a wrap."

He turned his gaze and saw that the convoy he had raced ahead of was now approaching, and with the path cleared, they were guaranteed a smooth passage.

Jamie sheathed his blade and turned his body around, about to wrap himself with spatial power when a torrent of blackened flames abruptly burst out from the dense forest on the side of the road and blasted towards him at supersonic speed.

It didn’t take up to a second for a hundred metres of distance to be crossed, but in the final fraction of a second before the inferno reached him, Jamie’s eyes snapped to the side, catching the deadly assault in the periphery of his vision.

His eyes glowed and spatial law energy rapidly concentrated, causing the air to ripple and distort, followed by a wormhole materializing in a sudden burst of power.

The blackened flames, now mere moments away from engulfing him, were drawn inexorably towards the wormhole that expanded with a hungry, pulsating light.

The torrent was swallowed in seconds, consumed by the wormhole’s insatiable maw, after with the wormhole collapsed upon itself with a soft, almost imperceptible pop.

"Now then...where the fuck did you come from?"

Jamie turned his gaze to the attack’s origin direction with a frown, just in time to witness the sight of the new menace emerging from the swamp.

A colossal salamander, scales glistening with the sheen of corrupted fire, dragged itself towards the road. Its eyes, like molten lava, burned with a primal rage as it reared up, dwarfing the surroundings.

It exhaled plumes of toxic smoke with each breath, and the ground trembled under the beast’s weight as it moved. Its massive tail swept across the ground, cracking the earth and sending shards of debris flying.

"Oh wow, to think there was a Level 900 lurking around here..."

Jamie spoke as he noticed the monster’s level of power, far higher than the horde he had just cleaned up earlier. Prompted by this, he raised his right hand in the direction of the incoming convoy and he released a wave of spatial power that enveloped them all.

"Spatial Expansion."

The power of the law of space bent to his will and the space the cars occupied was expanded to many times its original length.

As such, the cars which should have crossed the 500-metre distance between them in less than a minute now had an extra 5000 metres of distance to cross.

To any observer, however, it appeared as if the cars were simply standing still, even though their wheels were turning.

’That would keep them from getting close long enough for me to finish this one.’

This line of thought crossed Jamie’s mind as he returned his full focus to the salamander which opened its jaws to reveal row upon row of razor-sharp teeth, and an inferno within.

With a guttural roar, it unleashed a torrent of searing flame toward Jamie, making him sigh and lament the creature’s lack of intelligence.

"I blocked that the first time, what makes you think I can’t do it again?

Oh, wait...you can’t think."

Jamie spoke to the monster as he conjured another swirling wormhole in front of him, devouring the flames. With a flick of his wrist, he redirected the absorbed energy and concentrated it within his palm, before condensing it to a size where it could neatly fit between his fingers.

"Void."

The fabric of space thrummed as Jamie flicked his finger forward and released the concentrated sphere of dark energy towards the monstrous salamander.

Even without reason, the creature’s instincts screamed at it to dodge, but with its massive body and sluggish movements, it was unable to avoid the attack in time.

The orb of void energy blasted a clean hole through the monster’s left shoulder, blasting the limb off in a shower of blood and scales.

[GUAWAAAA!!!]

The beast’s anguished roar echoed through the forest as it staggered, its balance shattered. Not wasting the opportunity, Jamie launched himself forward, drawing his featureless blade as he sliced through the roiling miasma the monster hurled at him in a desperate attempt to keep him away.

The salamander lashed out with its remaining right claw, a frantic swipe that the Hybrid sidestepped with ease before piercing his blade into the wounded stump of its left arm.

"Azure Lightning."

Electricity crackled down his arm and surged through the blade, penetrating the salamander’s flesh and electrifying its innards. The searing shock caused blood to burst from the creature’s eyes and ears, its agonized roar intensifying.