Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 195: Prismatic Flow

"To think we have to make a pit stop when our goal’s just a few miles out."

Jamie muttered as he looked at the Argeryan guards changing the batteries of one of the cars up front.

His subspace didn’t have a time-freezing feature, so the magic power batteries in the cars there ended up dissipating a bit, as such, they did not hold enough energy for a complete trip.

Thankfully, they had spares kept in cases designed to prevent magic power from escaping, so they were now installing those spares...for all six cars.

Jamie got out of the one he was in and yawned lightly, spreading out his aura to construct a spatial map of the area.

’I can teleport right into Vroln from here...but that’d cause me to expend energy and I still haven’t recovered my magic power from fighting Laird.’

Even though he won, Jamie was drained of energy from fighting Laird as the latter was a Half-Deity with enough energy to turn a moon in the sky to pieces.

It was only natural that his energy took a hit.

In the few hours that had passed, he’d recovered up to close to 45% of his total. Considering how deep his energy reserves were, this was pretty fast. He had also taken a substantial amount of energy from Laird’s blood before he killed the man but Laird’s energy was lower quality than Jamie’s; so 10 units of Liard’s energy could only recover 3 units for Jamie.

But at the speed the cars moved with, Jamie doubted he’d be able to recover up to 50% by the time they entered Vroln.

Even if it was much harder for Tiris’ potential assassins to pull things off in Vroln due to the Sky goddess’ Faith’s influence, they already had a record of traitors so Jamie wanted to be prepared for anything.

Just as he thought this, his ears which had part of their focus on Miranda noticed that her breaths had turned uneven, signifying she had woken up.

He got up from the rock he was sitting on, glancing at the Argeryan servants who were replacing the fourth battery and walked up to the car to speak with Miranda.

She came out before he even reached the car, and Jamie opened his mouth to speak, however, no words came out.

"...ay?"

He could hear Miranda’s fragmented words and the man staggered backwards, before dropping on one knee while clutching his head in pain.

Miranda rushed up to him in alarm, but her voice sounded distant, and he couldn’t even feel her hands on him.

’Fuck...of all times!’

Jamie knew why he couldn’t hear her well.

His senses were overloaded with so much information that his brain was too busy processing, to think about processing the sounds coming from Miranda’s mouth.

Considering this was the brain of a Transcendent Hybrid, it was obvious that an average Joe would have lost consciousness if they had to deal with what Jamie was dealing with.

The light entering Jamie’s eyes was reduced, and his brain stopped processing most visual information, leaving only one thing he could see in his blurry vision.

The flow of energy.

Because of his spatial affinity, Jamie could always see the flow of energy.

He could perceive how the ambient energies and universal laws flowed through the fabric of space itself to make up the reality he was seeing.

Magic, Ether, Prana, Divinity, Celestial energy, Aether, Demonic energy, Holy energy and many more.

But in his energy perception, there were large gaps.

Jamie attributed those gaps to be spaces where energies he could not perceive or control flowed. This was something he expected as Jamie didn’t have affinity for every energy type out there. There were some he could not use.

When he was younger, Magic was the only thing he could perceive. As he gained the ability to manipulate ether to use in healing wounds, he began to perceive it too.

When he became a Legendary and gained Universal Law nodes on his soul, his perception expanded to energies he couldn’t control.

But there were still gaps in his perception; particularly huge ones at that. The more energies he could perceive, the wider these gaps got.

Right now, his eyes could ’see’ something filling up those gaps. Its colour was... all colours. It was as if every possible colour in the light spectrum was mixed together and was flowing along with the ambient energies.

This image wasn’t too clear as his vision was blurry. In one moment, this prismatic flow was there alongside the ambient magic power of the planet, and in the next moment, it was gone.

His brain couldn’t properly process what he was seeing as the information it was receiving was incomplete.

Suddenly, the energies went still for a second, and by the next, they were surging towards him recklessly.

Miranda who was beside him couldn’t tell a thing. The most she noticed was that the ambient magic power concentration spiked, but she couldn’t see this prismatic energy surging towards Jamie.

As for Jamie, he was fighting against it. Although absorbing it could grant him power, Jamie instinctively knew that doing so would be disastrous for him.

The current him did not have the necessary qualifications to wield this ’power’.

There was still something in his existence that was missing, and until he gained it, he could not accept this power.

Unfortunately, the little energy he managed to recover in the past few hours was what Jamie expended to protect his body and prevent this ’power’ from entering him.

Resisting it, however, was pretty easy with the help of universal laws...If one excludes the energy cost.

It only took Jamie a minute and he was back to normal. Now, he had to deal with the very worried Miranda.

"Jay, what was that all about?!"

"Well...shit happened."

"Be serious, Jay!"

Despite Miranda’s words, Jamie was still NOT serious, and perhaps this was why he let something slip.

"Don’t worry so much. Not like this is the first time."

"...this has happened before?"

"Ah!"

Jamie quickly realised he’d fucked up, and immediately, Miranda grabbed his both arms with an unshakable grip and asked as calmly as possible.

"Has. This. Happened. Before?

If. So. Then. How. Many. Times?"

The answer to that was 16, including just now. Ever since they got to Gnocyl Prime, Jamie had experienced this overload of sensory information an average of once or twice a month.

Hearing Jamie’s answer, Miranda was dumbfounded. Her first thought was to question If it was because of Jamie’s Hybrid powers but he denied it faster than she could even finish asking.

This, however, was a Lie.

Jamie’s Existence was trying to adapt to something; to acclimate to a new Level of Being. He guessed it was one of, if not the only the reason he hadn’t Exuviated yet.

The problem was that this Level of Being had stages. For convenience’s sake, let’s say Stage 1 and Stage 2. These stages need to be followed in order.

But Jamie’s Perfect Hybrid body had far too many similarities to Stage 2, so it was now trying to directly send him straight to Stage 2.

This wasn’t possible for 2 reasons.

First, he needed to follow the Stages in ascending order. He could not escape this.

Secondly, Jamie was not in the required Existence Realm for Stage 2. He needed to be at least a Low-Tier Deity at the very least.

However, Jamie was currently a Transcendent with half a foot into the Half-Deity Realm, so he naturally did not meet this compulsory requirement.

Since his Hybrid Body was trying to force Stage 2, Jamie had to consciously repress it and make it stick to Stage 1.

As for what this ’power’ he was dealing with was, Jamie wasn’t too sure, but he had had a guess. With how clear the surge of multi-coloured energy that tried to enter his body became at the last moment, his guess was 95% confirmed.

The reason for this guess was a conversation that he had with Angela over five years ago.

◇　◇　◇

From a time before Angela had turned Jamie into a Hybrid; when she was still busy trying to modify the results that she got from turning Miranda and perfect the artificial genetic/soul code she was creating.

Like always, the woman’s hair looked no different than a bird’s nest, and she had eyebags that made her look like she hadn’t slept for years.

Her clothes and accessories, however, were impeccably clean, without a single spot on her white lab coat and not a single dust particle on her glasses.