Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 198: Shale’s Gambit
"Now, then...I’m sure you know why I’m here...right?"
He spoke with a grin and instantly, the Holy Knights all drew their weapons and filled them with Holy Magic and Divinity.
Jamie grabbed Miranda’s shoulder and took a step back, deciding to leave the fight to them.
Their job was to get Tiris to Skyhaven; whatever happened after that was not their concern. More importantly, Jamie wasn’t in the best state as his energy reserves were still a little bit below 50%.
Drinking energy potions helped speed up his recovery, but as stated earlier, he had vast reserves which would take a lot of time to fill up.
’Tsk...I wanted to use those Deities guarding the pope...’
He thought to himself as he felt the presences of more Knights approaching the scene, their numbers quickly rising towards 100.
A group formed a defensive perimeter around Tiris, aiming to take her away when the fighting began, while the other stared up at the man standing on the gate.
Seeing the ’welcome party’ the Knights were preparing, the man laughed and spoke.
"Dealing with you lot isn’t impossible, but you aren’t my targets so I’d need you to exit the stage." 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮
Following his words, the leader of the Holy Knights charged at him, but in the second that the Knight used to reach him, the flow of time slowed down to a crawl.
The man moved normally in this slowed time, raising his palm and conjuring a spell circle.
"World Magic: Spell Number 25: World Isolation Barrier."
From the magic circle hovering above his palm, a semi-transparent space-warping wave of energy radiated outwards, stretching towards the edges of Skyhaven Mountain.
This wave was formed from a mixture of various energy types, magic power, ether, aura, celestial energy, demonic energy and so on.
It blanketed the sky, extending to take on the form of a massive dome that encompassed the entirety of Skyhaven, including a few hundred metres of area around the foot of the mountain.
The flow of time returned to normal and the sword of the Holy Knight leader reached the man, but the latter just dodged with inhuman speed and allowed the sword to split the gate in two.
He turned and prepared a follow-up attack, but he was suddenly surrounded by streaks of spatial law energy.
Not just him, but every single Holy Knight and Priest within the giant dome-shaped barrier.
All the knights tried to fight it with their energies when they noticed this, but regardless of their input in the matter, the Universal Law energy forcefully ensnared every single one of them, before proceeding to send them through the fabric of space and out of the massive semi-transparent dome barrier.
A second later, all the existences on Skyhaven—save for Jamie, Miranda and Tiris—were teleported off the mountain.
"Now, doesn’t this seem much better?"
"..."
Jamie frowned silently as he tried to probe the World Isolation barrier that this unknown figure had set up and the results he got weren’t the good kind at all!
’This Barrier has traces of a High-Level Authority...I can’t override it.’
As Jamie thought that, the man jumped down from the building roof he was standing on, strutting towards them while twirling his blade in the air.
"I’ve been itching to test out my Sword Authority."
Hearing his words, Jamie raised a brow in confusion and used an appraisal skill on the man, revealing his status board.
|Name- ’Shale’
Race- E̷r̴r̴o̷r̷-̶D̴a̶t̵a̴ ̷n̶o̴t̵ ̴f̵o̸u̷n̴d̶!̸
Gender-Male
Age-37
Level-1000
Existence Level-Transcendent (Superior)
Titles- [...] [...] [...], Talkative, Dwarf in a Flask, Successful Experiment, Part Homunculus.
Class- A̴̧͙͋ͅN̴͍̟͖̔̌t̴̤̔̀͝I̴͈͋-̸̙̈́̏ǘ̶̢̲̪͐ñ̵͍͉̦͘k̵̨̛̟̱̀̋n̸̞̋̐o̸͎̩̘̅w̴̩̉̈́́n̷̙͇̕
Health–X3+
Energy- X3+
Strength– X3+
Agility– X3+
Durability– X3+
Intelligence- X3+
Condition- Normal, Amused.
Magic Tiers-Fire Tier 1, Earth Tier 5, Water Tier 5, Wind Tier 2, Ice Tier 4, Space Tier 2, Time Tier 0.
Skills-Doppel, Lethe, Pain Nullification, Body Strengthening, Energy Control, Water Magic(M), Ice Magic(M), Stone Skin, Elemental Resistance, Severing Slash, Undefined, Undefined, Undefined.
Unique Skills-Five Steps of Extinction, Pseudo-Authority of Swords, Pseudo-Authority of Extinction. |
The man’s status board was filled with blank spots, a bunch of ’Undefined’ and Error messages, the kind of thing that told Jamie this ’Shale’ was definitely not a normal person.
"Let’s spar a bit, shall we?"
Shale spoke with a grin, dropping the visor of his helmet before charging at Jamie. With a fluid motion, Jamie drew his sword, barely managing to block the man’s lightning-fast strike.
Although Jamie was currently lacking energy, that had nothing to do with his physical body’s ridiculous prowess.
Their swords clashed with a resounding clang that echoed through the mountain air, sending sparks flying from the collision, illuminating their faces momentarily.
Jamie sidestepped, narrowly avoiding a follow-up strike aimed at his midsection and countered with a horizontal slash, forcing his opponent to leap back. Shale’s footwork was flawless, his balance impeccable as he seamlessly transitioned from one stance to another, deftly parrying all the blur of rapid strikes Jamie unleashed.
Their swords clashed again, locking together as they pressed against each other, muscles straining for a second in a contest of strength Shale lost when Jamie suddenly pushed him back.
Jamie spun on his heel, delivering a powerful roundhouse kick that the man barely avoided by ducking low. But the Hybrid followed up, taking advantage of his opponent’s momentary lapse and bringing his sword down in a swift arc.
Shale rolled to the side, the blade slicing through the air inches from his head. He sprang to his feet, retaliating with a lightning-quick thrust aimed at Jamie’s heart, but the Hybrid twisted his body, the blade grazing his ribs but failing to penetrate.
Jamie closed the distance and swung his blade in a wide arc that forced Shale to backpedal. Following it up, Jamie lunged forward and thrust his sword but Shale sidestepped and countered with a powerful upward slash.
Though Jamie deflected it, the force pushed him back and created a great distance between them. But instead of lunging at Jamie who hadn’t yet recovered, Shale turned around and charged at Tiris instead.
It wasn’t all that surprising considering he was supposed to be an assassin after her, so Miranda already moved to intercept him from the moment she saw Shale change directions.
On the other hand, Jamie raised his hand and attempted to conjure a Void barrier around Tiris, however, Shale suddenly backed away from Miranda and released a powerful slash of Sword Law energy, severing the connection between Jamie and the half-formed barrier around Tiris.
This caused the incomplete barrier to quickly collapse and Jamie was unable to deploy it again as the man charged at him in the next split second.
Tiris naturally knew that her presence here could be a liability to Jamie and Miranda, so she turned around and ran from the area to not hold them back.
Meanwhile, Jamie kicked the Shale away after parrying one of his strikes, and a torrent of flames bashed him from the side, knocking him into the air.
Just as Shale fell on the ground, it caved open and a pillar of purple fire erupted from under him, sending him flying once more.
However, Shale emerged from the pillar of fire unscathed, with a shield of water law energy surrounding him. He redirected that energy into his sword and threw it at Miranda, but Jamie conjured a wormhole to warp the sword to his position.
Jamie grabbed the blade that emerged from the wormhole and then spun to generate momentum before flinging it at Shale.
Although he instinctively attempted to catch his blade, those same instincts warned the helmet-clad man of danger so he crossed his arms in front of his chest and conjured a 5-layered barrier around himself, a second before the sword exploded with force that sent him reeling.
Shale’s barriers were all erased by the void explosion and his combat suit suffered some damage.
Before he even crashed down, Miranda had already charged forward while Jamie held out his hand and commanded.
[By my command, Bend and obliterate. Spatial-Destruction Bullet!]
A glowing sphere of energy shot out from his hand and tore through space on its way to its target, but said target conjured a new blade from Sword Law energy and used it to slice the bullet in half.
But just as Shale spilt that one, he turned his gaze upward and saw the lights of countless more raining down towards him.
Shale began swinging his sword in a frenzy, slashing apart bullet after bullet, but amid this onslaught, Miranda dashed in from his back and thrust her flame-constructed spear at his neck.
"?!"
He turned around at the last moment and blocked the strike, conjuring his five-layer shield to block the bullets raining on him from behind but the shields were broken as five bullets tore through all five of them.
One hit his sword arm’s shoulder and this broke his block, so Miranda struck again.
’She’s not scared of getting hit? The bullets are phasing through her!’
Jamie was using Selective Destruction, so Miranda was fearless even under the seemingly infinite rain of bullets. He would’ve liked to use Void power, but sadly, he couldn’t use Selective Destruction with that so Miranda would be in trouble if he did.
Shale’s combat suit had its durability rapidly decrease and within seconds, its backside was getting close to breaking.
He still had to deal with Miranda trying to stab his neck so he conjured as many barriers as he could and raised his sword, however, a wormhole appeared right before her spear touched him and the spear went into it, remerging behind him from another wormhole.
It almost pierced him in the back of the neck, but at the last moment, Shale’s skin hardened to stone and the spear bounced right off it.
"What the?!"
"Never seen a ’Stone Skin’ before?"
Shale spoke, seemingly laughing behind his helmet as he turned and grabbed the spear, trying to pull Miranda through the wormhole.
However, unlike Liard who easily got caught by this, Miranda instantly let go of the spear and Jamie closed the wormhole, causing its spatial energy constructing it to ignite the flame power her spear was made off.
**BOOM!!!
The force of the blast knocked his head in Miranda’s direction and she entered her half-wolf form before punching his head in the opposite direction.
She wanted to follow up, but she suddenly staggered and her transformation was forcefully released.
’Tsk...I can’t control it well!’
It had only been a few hours since she regained her Hybrid powers, and even with her intuition, she still had issues controlling her transformations.
For a moment, she regretted sealing them.
Meanwhile, the man Miranda had punched crashed through a building, his body rag-dolling for several meters before he staggered to his feet. He looked up just in time to see Jamie’s foot colliding with the side of his head. The force of the blow sent Shale hurtling to the left, creating multiple sonic booms.
Jamie teleported behind him, delivering a powerful kick to the man’s back that launched him a dozen meters into the air.
Before the echo of the strike reached Miranda’s ears on the ground, Jamie had already appeared above his airborne opponent and unleashed another kick, propelling him towards the barrier wall. Jamie teleported again, meeting him mid-air with a downward slam, sending the man hurtling towards the ground with devastating force.
**BOOM!!
