Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 193: Infernal Resilience

Dar’s divinity wrapped around Miranda’s body before she could escape, and the man used his powerful energy to hold her legs so she couldn’t jump away like before.

Slamming his palms together, the earth under her feet crumbled into malleable sand which engulfed and immobilized her.

Without hesitation, he clenched his fist and caused the sand to contract. The sand pressed on Miranda from all directions with a pressure that violently fragmented her bones.

Miranda’s eyes glowed brightly and she screamed out, releasing a powerful disorienting sonic blast which destabilized the energy in the sand trying to crush her.

Everyone dropped to their knees while clutching their heads in pain, and even Dar had to cover his ears due to the noise.

With the hold on her loosened, Miranda used her Violet Inferno skill to summon an Ember Storm and a Hellfire Whirlwind.

Countless purple lights dotted the sky and within seconds, a barrage of flaming embers rained down from above, whilst a whirlwind of purple fire swirled around Miranda’s body, tearing through the binds on her with cyclonic force.

She dropped to the ground with her arm and leg bones broken, but in the same instant she touched the ground, her bones all snapped back into place and the blood spilling from the places where the broken bones had pierced out of her skin disappeared.

Dar created an earthen shield to block the raining flames, but his shield quickly shattered to pieces when Miranda turned in his direction and released a hypersonically amplified sound wave through a scream.

The sonic breath tore through Dar’s shield with devastating force, sending his body hurtling over a kilometre into the air.

Everyone else felt their eardrums tremble heavily from the sound, teetering on the verge of rupturing. For the next few minutes, they wouldn’t be able to hear a thing, their ears ringing painfully as they tried to regain their senses amidst the chaos.

The time it’d take Dar to crash down onto the ground, get to his feet and return would only be less than a minute, so Miranda didn’t hesitate to attack the other traitor Mercs within that time.

The woman was in a half-berserk state, caused by her now-awakened Vampire side which had been starved for blood...for over 3 years.

Miranda hacked and slashed at them with her claws, dismembering them and ripping out organs, while the blood she spilt slowly condensed into an orb hovering above her head.

With each kill, she accumulated more EXP, managing to level up to 995 by the time Dar blitzed in with a broadsword held above his head.

He swung the weapon down with all his might, caring not for the damage that would be caused, however, the floating blood orb transformed into a giant five-layered shield that blocked the attack aimed at Miranda’s blind spot.

’Wait...blood?!’

Dar’s eyes widened when the blood finally entered his perception. He began to question if Jamie had returned but looking around, he saw no trace of either Jamie nor Laird.

’Also...Laird is taking too much time!’

Those thoughts crossed his mind in a second and he refocused on the blood shields that had been cracked. He pulled his blade back and thrust it forward six times in a second.

Each thrust punctuated holes in the shields destroying the first three layers, but by the fourth, more blood was absorbed into the shields and the next two thrusts didn’t so much as dent them.

’It got stronger?’

Dar made this correct observation as he jumped back to gain distance, avoiding Miranda’s roundhouse kick as well as the spinning high kick that followed.

Looking at Miranda, Dar saw that the lower half of her face was covered in blood, so much so that it was dripping from her lips and down onto her clothes.

’Did she...eat them?’

His eyes momentarily went to the corpse behind her and in that instant, Miranda dashed forward and threw her fist forward. Flames swirled around it and in a second, a vortex of purple fire was barrelling towards him, forcing his full attention back to her as he raised the blade and split the flames in two.

Dar’s slash cut not only the flames but also Miranda’s fist which she had thrown forward, going on to split her arm in two with its power.

However, Miranda ignored the damage and grabbed Dar’s earthen blade, turning it into a puddle of molten rock with the absurd heat of her flames.

’Her flames have gotten hotter? Did she level up by killing these guys or something? But a single level or two shouldn’t bring this much of a difference!’

Dar asked himself all of these as he let go of the sword, conjuring earthen spears that launched towards Miranda, however, when the spears got within a metre of her, they instantly melted into puddles that dropped to the floor.

As she stepped forward, the ground her foot touched melted and the flames still burning Dar’s hand seemed to increase their damage over time.

Miranda had been avoiding her Hybrid powers like it was some sort of plague, and unsurprisingly, this caused her to be weaker than she was supposed to be.

Now, that she had unsealed them, her strength was slowly rising to what it was meant to be, and in drinking the blood of the mercs she killed, she was temporarily enhanced even further.

Let’s say Level 990+s dealt 100 units of Damage on average; Miranda, due to her nonstandard nature, dealt 150 units.

With her Hybrid powers unsealed, her Damage was slowly climbing towards the 500 it was supposed to be, and if she kept on drinking more blood, it’d spike towards 700! Maybe, she might even surpass it!

Finally, all the damage she took was recovered instantly due to her immortal body.

With that kind of power, it was only natural that she could trade blows with Dar who was a Deity level 28.

Meeting Dar’s divinity-coated fists with her flaming ones, Miranda felt the bones in her arm shatter as Dar’s brute strength surpassed hers. Yet, she recovered almost instantly and threw another punch to meet his, again, and again, and again.

At first, her entire arm was fractured; next, it was just her upper arm, then her wrist, and finally, only her fingers broke. By the sixth exchange, Miranda sustained no damage and managed to match Dar’s strength momentarily before being forced back.

Dar noticed this and the man was flabbergasted.

He didn’t even know which to be more surprised at; her absurd recovery, or the fact that her power was growing by the second.

Stomping on the ground, Dar unleashed powerful seismic waves that shattered the earth beneath them, destabilizing Miranda’s footing. Before she could regain her balance, he launched a punch to her torso, sending her body hurtling through the air.

Dar cupped his palms together, rapidly condensing his divinity, and released it as a concentrated beam of power toward the airborne hybrid.

Miranda reflexively crossed her arms in front of her chest to block, willing the blood on the floor to surge up to her and form multi-layered shields to protect her.

However, Dar’s energy was too strong. It tore through all her shields, both blood and flame, in an instant before hitting her arms and obliterating them both.

Miranda’s body crashed down to the ground and rag-dolled for a few metres, with everything from her shoulders down gone. Blood spurted out from the stumps and Dar chased her with a follow-up, arriving just in time to witness an astonishing sight.

Tendrils of flesh and bone spiralled outward from the stumps, weaving together with sinews and muscles knitting themselves seamlessly. Her skin reformed over the newly formed limbs, and within moments, Miranda’s arms were whole once more.

With newfound strength, Miranda executed a perfect handspring, launching herself back to her feet.

As she landed, she released another Sonic Breath, a devastating wave of sound that rippled through the air with concussive force, but Dar dodged to the side and covered his ears with divinity to block out the disorienting noise.

Without missing a beat, Dar retaliated, turning the ground around Miranda to a swirling maelstrom of quicksand, and then rained down jagged rocks and spears of earth.

Miranda burned away the sand with her flames and then used those same flames to rocket herself towards Dar, spearing the man onto the floor. She pulled back her arm, completely assuming her half-wolf form and punching down on the man’s face.

Dar took the first hit to the nose, but before Miranda could send in the second, a mass of earth slammed into her body from the side and knocked her off him.

The Hybrid landed on the ground and rolled for a bit, and while still on the ground, she slammed her palm on the floor and infused her magic into it.

The earth under Dar who was charging at her with a broadsword caved open and from the depths, a geyser of purple flames erupted, a torrent of searing heat and destructive law energy. The flames surged upwards, engulfing Dar’s body in a towering whirlwind of violet fire that pierced the heavens.

Dar gritted his teeth as the flames consumed him, feeling the intense heat sear through his defences. Enveloping himself in a shield of divine energy, he weathered the flames, his form barely visible through the inferno.

He retaliated with a powerful burst of earth magic, causing the ground beneath Miranda to erupt in an explosion of rock and debris, but the Hybrid healed from all the damage she sustained in an instant and charged right at Dar.

The god made a right swing, but Miranda ducked low and threw an upward punch at the elbow of his outstretched arm. Flames shot out of her hands and the force bent the joint in the opposite direction.

Dar screamed and conjured a spear with his divinity, striking Miranda faster than she could move away. The spear tore in from her right shoulder, sliced under her neck, right above her heart and then slashed down to her left armpit.

It was a clean strike that cleaved right through the Hybrid, but Miranda ignored it, grabbed his spear with her hands and melted it with her flames.

By the time she did that, the fatal strike he just hit her with had healed, leaving her torn clothes as the only damage.

As for Dar, the man was livid.