Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 191: Spatial War
Barely a second later, there was a crunching sound and Jamie’s head snapped back into position. What’s more, it turned out that there was a barrier of coagulated blood right in front of his forehead, so he hadn’t taken a direct hit.
Still, for it to snap his neck even without taking a direct hit, Laird’s attack was definitely powerful.
"Nice try."
Jamie spoke with a grin, before holding up two fingers and waving it down.
[Basic Attack Sequence #1: Slash.]
A swift arc of spatial energy hurtled towards Laird, who deflected it effortlessly with a wave of his hand, dispersing the energy harmlessly.
[Sequence #2: Cut.]
Two scissored blades of spatial power converged on Larid’s torso from both sides, but he raised barriers of compressed space that shattered them before they could reach him.
[Sequence #3: Carve.]
Jamie waved his palm down, releasing a denser wave of spatial power that carved through a huge section of space itself. Laird tried to deflect it, but it carved out his defences, as well as a huge chunk of his flesh.
Laird winced as his blood spilt onto the ground, and Jamie manipulated the drifter’s blood to form point-blank blood bullets and launched them at Laird.
The bullets pelted Laird’s arms as he crossed them in front of his chest to block, each impact tearing through his flesh and leaving holes that oozed blood.
In the time he was down, Jamie summoned his featureless blade, slicing his palm along its edge, releasing a burst of thick blood that surged like a fountain.
Within seconds, the floor around Jamie was covered in more blood than a body should have. His spilt blood constantly regenerated within moments, allowing him to continue releasing it instead of using magically created blood like other vampires.
’This... he’s trying to encroach on my Bounded Field!’
Laird’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the spatial power mixed into the blood. He teleported behind Jamie and attempted an attack to disrupt the Hybrid, but the viscous crimson liquid on the floor surged up to form a shield, blocking his strike. The blood then exploded into a shower of blades, blasting Laird back.
Jamie turned, his sword now covered in blood, and slashed at Laird, sending a powerful wave of blood infused with spatial and destructive power.
Though Laird conjured energy shields, the spatial infusion allowed the attack to phase through, hitting him across the chest and tearing off his clothes and flesh in an explosion of destructive energy.
Jamie continued manipulating the blood pool on the ground, forming tendrils and blades that lashed out at Laird and forced him to take distance.
The drifter conjured a spear with spatial power and stabbed it into the air, creating a wormhole. Instantly, a dozen wormholes appeared around Jamie, and twelve spears burst out, stabbing toward him.
To avoid being turned into a porcupine, Jamie used spatial expansion to increase the ’distance’ the spears had to cross to get to him, before reaching out to a seemingly random spear. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
He grabbed it and pulled, and simultaneously, Laird’s hand was pulled into the wormhole he created.
"Got you!"
|?!|
Before Laird could pull his hand back out of the entry wormhole in front of him, Jamie used his other hand to grab the edges of the exit wormhole and usurped control over it, widening it enough to pass through.
Laird threw a punch toward Jamie’s head that emerged right in front of him, but Jamie used spatial mimicry, making the punch phase through him.
Reaching out with both hands, Jamie grabbed onto Laird’s shoulders and sunk his fangs into the drifter’s neck.
An agonized scream escaped Laird’s mouth as Jamie’s fangs transmitted the sensation of excruciating pain, mimicking the agony the Hybrid had felt from drinking wolfsbane over a decade ago.
Screaming, Laird coated his hand in spatial power and grabbed Jamie, preventing the Hybrid from using spatial mimicry. He ripped Jamie off his body and flung him into the distance, reaching out to grab his wounded neck.
Jamie flipped mid-air and snapped his fingers, causing the blood on Laird’s neck to explode with a force that knocked him to the ground.
The infuriated drifter quickly got back on his feet, his eyes glowing with anger as he used his spatial authority to lock Jamie in space. Next, he held up both hands and activated another ability.
|Authority of Space! Collapse!!!|
Caring not for his Bounded Field’s stability, Laird created a spherical barrier around Jamie to seal him in, then slammed his palms together, using spatial power to collapse the space and crush Jamie within.
**BOOOMM!!!
’Wait...something’s wrong!’
In the last split second before his spatial power could crush Jamie, the Hybrid’s body exploded into a shower of blood and gore.
’His body exploded before my power touched him!’
Noticing this discrepancy, Laird instantly figured that Jamie was trying to do something and wanted to use his Spatial Collapse as a cover. However, the drifter was sharper than Jamie expected, so he noticed this and was on guard.
As Laird staggered to his feet, ’something’ burst out from the blood, charging at him hypersonically. Expecting this, Laird conjured a six-layered shield in front of him, but to his shock, the shields were all torn through in a second!
’Something’ latched onto his hand, and he felt teeth sink into his arm. On instinct, he used spatial mimicry, but the teeth didn’t phase out of his arm like they should have.
He threw a punch to knock the ’something’ off, and when he finally did, he looked at his arm and saw drag marks where the teeth had ripped out his flesh.
Looking up, he saw the blood fall off the body of his attacker and mix with the blood sea on the floor, revealing the attacker’s appearance.
"...a wolf?"
Laird was dumbfounded. He had been fighting a vampire. Where the fuck did this wolf come from?
He scanned his Bounded Field but saw that besides this wolf, there was no one else inside it. His brain didn’t even think of the impossibility that the vampire he was fighting had turned into the silver-furred, 10-foot-tall wolf in front of him.
[Looking for me?]
Jamie’s voice came from behind and Laird saw the wolf he was looking out dissolve into the puddle of blood—it was a blood clone.
The drifter teleported to avoid the real one behind him, but the Wolf followed him through space, clamping down on his arm with its sharp fangs. The fangs dug into his flesh and Laired immediately experienced the same sensation of phantom pain as when his blood was sucked earlier.
’This...!’
Laird condensed spatial power in his other hand and slammed it down onto the wolf’s head, but before it hit, the wolf bit down with force, brutally ripping off his right arm from the elbow.
Laird’s attack hit the wolf, blasting apart its fur, flesh, and bone, but they healed within seconds.
However, the fate of Laird’s arm was different.
Blood spilt uncontrollably onto the ground, and the wound quickly began festering. Laird’s basic healing magic could barely do anything to such a serious wound.
As he looked up at his attacker, he saw the wolf staring back at him. Its mouth opened, and the voice of the ’vampire’ he was fighting earlier resounded.
[Damn, that looks bad. A pity... you can’t regenerate like I can.]
|You...!|
Laird’s brain couldn’t comprehend what was happening. How did the vampire become a werewolf? Or was he a wolf from the beginning? Then the blood manipulation? So many questions rang out in his head, but he knew this was not the time to find answers.
’I have to pull Dar here... we need to kill this guy!’
Laird quickly tried to extend his power to the outside space to drag Dar into the Bounded Field, but to his shock, he couldn’t.
|What..?!|
[Why so surprised? Did you think I poured so much blood around for nothing?]
Jamie laughed as he stepped forward, sending blood splashing around with his massive body. He had used the blood that he spilt as a conduit to encroach on Laird’s Bounded Field. Though he couldn’t destroy it, he could prevent Laird from adding anyone to it.
[This is a one-on-one between us. I intend to keep it that way. Besides, I need your companion to act as Mira’s punching bag.]
With those words, Jamie infused magic power into his jaws and leapt at the drifter.
[Aspect of the Wolf: Devouring Jaws!]
