Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 204: Five Steps of Extinction
|Unique Skill: Five Steps of Extinction. |
Shale lunged forward with blinding speed, moving faster than the sound of his words reached Jamie and sending his rapier slicing through the air with deadly precision.
The initial attack was a sudden, sharp thrust aimed at Jamie’s midsection which Jamie barely managed to intercept with a barrier of condensed flames. His spatial expansion broke due to the powerful extinction law energy and the pressure he tried to use to force the blade’s trajectory also failed to prevent it from cutting through, leaving a searing burn across his side.
The ground beneath Jamie’s feet erupted in dust from the force of the impact.
1
Before Jamie could recover from the damage of the first one, Shale pivoted on his heel and delivered a sweeping horizontal slash. The rapier’s edge was a blur of shimmering energy, and despite Jamie’s desperate attempt to block it with a shield of spatial distortion, the rapier found its mark.
The blade carved a deep, searing gash across Jamie’s chest, sending him sprawling backwards with a cry of pain.
2
As Jamie staggered, Shale closed the distance with lightning speed, executing a precise vertical stab aimed directly at Jamie’s heart. Jamie, struggling to maintain his footing, barely managed to raise a wall of void energy in time, successfully blocking the third strike.
The Extinction energy was nullified by Jamie’s void power, but Shale recreated another blade with his Authority of Swords in his other hand at an even faster speed. The new rapier pierced through Jamie’s hastily conjured energy barrier and struck his chest, the impact reverberating through his entire body.
3
Jamie’s vision blurred and his body’s mobility reduced as the Anti-Hybrid Factors infused in Shale’s sword enhanced the ones already running through his body, worsening their effects.
Shale’s rapier withdrew for a moment and he switched it back to his dominant hand before thrusting forward with a calculated, diagonal cut.
The attack, infused with cosmic energy, came from an unexpected angle, bypassing Jamie’s weakened durability and cutting through Jamie’s left arm, severing muscles and tendons in a single, motion.
Jamie’s arm fell limp, the pain radiating through his body, and his energy circulation in that arm conked out, causing the blade he was holding to dissipate.
4
Shale raised his rapier high above his hade and transformed the blade, giving it a very sharp cutting edge. Cosmic and extinction law energies surged into the weapon, making it leave rainbow trails in the air as he brought it down in a powerful, descending arc.
Jamie, battered and on the brink of collapse, could barely block. None of the barriers he could create with his depleted energy were able to hold back the slash for even half a second.
The final strike sliced through Jamie’s body with ruthless efficiency, cutting deep into his shoulder and continuing downward.
5
The force of the fifth strike seemed to rip through Jamie’s very existence, sending shockwaves of energy that distorted the fabric of space around them.
The ground beneath their feet fractured and split, deep fissures radiating outward from the point of impact.
Jamie’s form trembled, a pained grimace etched on his face as the power of the ’Five Steps of Extinction’ coursed through him and reached the core of his existence.
His vision darkened, and for a moment, he felt that his soul itself had been struck.
Barely conscious, Jamie knelt on the ground, his body scarred and his energy waning, the power of Shale’s final attack having taken its toll. His breathing was ragged, each inhale a struggle as he fought to stay conscious.
Summoning the last vestiges of his strength, Jamie took one final deep breath before muttering a word.
"...void."
Instantly, void energy erupted from his body in a blinding explosion of dark blue power that consumed everything in sight. The void power enveloped Shale faster than he could even think, blanketing the entirety of the barrier in a consuming darkness that devoured even light for a second.
Shale’s body was buffeted by the immense power, thrown through the air like a discarded rag doll.
He crashed violently against the barrier’s wall, his combat suit on his upper body torn apart, his skin and flesh gruesomely shredded. His ribs were exposed, and glimpses of his internal organs could be seen through the gaping wounds.
He fell to the ground, coughing up blood, his vision swimming as he tried to make sense of the devastation.
Raising his gaze, Shale saw a giant mass of bubbling flesh where Jamie had stood moments before.
The mass began to morph, taking the shape of a half-furless werewolf, with Jamie’s humanoid upper body protruding from the creature’s head. Jamie’s eyes had turned a ghostly white, devoid of pupils and any hint of sentience.
He bellowed a mighty roar, a primal sound that echoed through the entire mountain.
Long appendages of flesh burst from the wolf’s sides, reaching out toward Shale with terrifying speed. The Anti-Hybrid Soldier jumped up, charging headfirst into the onslaught of limbs.
He navigated through the writhing mass with agility, conjuring twin blades of extinction energy which he used to slice and dice the appendages with precision, despite his grievous wounds.
As he closed the distance, Shale reached the werewolf’s head, where Jamie’s upper body was perched. With a swift upward slash, he cut through Jamie’s left hand. Reversing his grip, he brought the blade down diagonally, piercing through the side of Jamie’s head in a fluid motion.
The entire wolf body froze for a moment, then began to dissipate into a blood mist. Jamie’s body fell from the dissipating mass, crashing into the ground with a heavy thud, creating a crater on impact.
Shale staggered, his breathing laboured, and he collapsed to the floor, glancing down at his own grievous wounds.
Blood flowed freely from his torn flesh, and he silently thanked his creators for granting him pain nullification—he sure as hell didn’t want to feel the agony of his injuries.
"This...it’d take me more than a month to heal...!"
Shale clicked his tongue, trying to force himself to his feet. After several failed attempts, he gave up and watched as his flesh slowly regrew, covering the gaps in his ribcage.
Unsurprisingly, Sub-Cosmic beings possessed regenerative capabilities. They couldn’t hold such a grand designation without the ability to self-heal.
However, when compared with the Hybrids who could sprout new limbs on demand and regenerate if even a single cell nucleus was all that was left of them, Sub-Cosmic regeneration seemed lacklustre, though it wasn’t.
On a scale of 1-10, Sub-Cosmic regeneration was a solid 7.5/10, maybe 8/10. But Hybrids? At least 50/10.
Anyway, Jamie’s last stand attack had dealt enough damage that even with such a good regenerative prowess, Shale would need more than a month to completely heal.
"Oh well, mission accomplished Boss."
The man laughed as he finally managed to get himself up on his feet, before turning his gaze in the direction of the place where there had been repeated impacts to the Cosmic energy barrier. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎
"Right...there was another one.
This guy wounded me a lot, and my Anti-Hybrid Factors only work on him and not her, so there’s no need to trouble myself with her."
With that thought, Shale moved his body in the opposite direction, slowly walking towards the edge of the barrier.
’If it wasn’t for the fact that the artifact was embedded into my body, then that void blast would have destroyed it along with my other artifacts.’
Shale had a utility belt and pouch filled with healing artifacts and tools, but all had been destroyed when Jamie hit him with a point-blank void explosion. As such, he had no way to recover except to wait for his regeneration to take effect.
He used his magic power to force out the residual void energy from his wounds, allowing them to heal at least slightly while he walked, reaching the edge of the barrier within a few minutes.
"Good, now. I have to disable the Inner Layer and speed run my way to the World Isolation Barrier faster than that Hybrid girl can catch up to me."
Shale remembered the thousands of Holy Knights surrounding the World Isolation Barrier. To escape their encirclement, Shale decided to use his remaining cosmic energy to project multiple false energy signatures, each one mimicking his own and sending them darting in different directions.
The Holy Knights, sensing these decoys, would inevitably split their forces to chase after them, leaving gaps in their formation and Shale planned to take advantage of this.
Taking a deep breath, the man deactivated the Cosmic Artifact inside his body and immediately kicked off the ground, running as fast as his wounded body could carry.
However, his speed in his wounded state wasn’t enough to outrun the Hybrid who literally rocket-boosted herself over to his location.
Miranda crashed down from above like a meteor, creating a huge cloud of dust and smoke with shockwaves that pushed Shale back.
"...what? Why are you the one here?"
When she sensed the barrier dissolve, Miranda dashed over in the direction where she sensed a presence without thinking, but upon arriving, the one she saw was not the one she wanted to see.
Seeing her dumbfounded expression, Shale chuckled lightly as he swirled cosmic energy around his palm and spoke.
"Why else? Because I killed your little boyfriend."
"...."
Miranda’s brain did not compute the man’s words as she was too busy trying to understand why she could not sense Jamie’s presence.
To her, the thought of Jamie dying was incomprehensible.
But after spreading her aura to cover the entirety of the mountain and not detecting any life signs beside hers, Tiris and Shale’s, her eyes widened.
Her mind couldn’t take the shock.
’Jamie? Dead?’
"...impossible...Jay’s immortal..."
"Haha, that’s what he said."
Shale laughed a response to Miranda’s mutter, and finally, the woman recalled that the man was before her.
"...you...it was yoU!!"
Miranda’s rage erupted like a volcanic explosion.
The ground beneath her feet shattered, massive fissures spreading out in all directions, from which geysers of molten lava shot out, their intense heat turning the air around them into a shimmering haze.
The sky above darkened, as if responding to the fury radiating from her and Shale’s eyes widened in shock as he felt the raw, unbridled power surging from her.
’Oy, she wasn’t this powerful when I checked this morning!!!’
He had thought he could handle her even in his wounded state based on her previous evaluation, but now, he was sure he certainly could NOT.
Shale took a step back, his confidence wavering. The cosmic energy in his palm flickered as he realized the situation was far different from anything he had envisioned.
However, before Miranda could act on her rage, Shale suddenly felt an invisible force wrap around his body, gripping him with an ironclad hold.
Before he could react, he was catapulted into the air with immense force, shooting upward at hypersonic speed. His trajectory took him straight into the roof of the World Isolation Barrier, where he impacted with a resounding crash, causing cracks to spiderweb around the massive dome of energy.
As gravity took over, Shale’s body plummeted back to the ground like a shooting star, creating a massive, kilometre-wide crater upon impact. The force of his landing sent shockwaves through the earth, displacing boulders and trees in a radius around the crater.
Shale lay at the bottom of the crater, stunned and dumbfounded, his mind racing as he tried to process what had just happened.
Then the realization hit him like a freight train: the force that had moved his body was cosmic energy.
"No...way..."
Shale forced those words out of his lips as he spat out blood. He conjured a sword from cosmic energy, using it as a crutch to force himself to his feet.
As he steadied himself, he felt a sudden shift in the number of presences in his perception. It had increased by one.
His eyes widened in shock, and his breath caught in his throat.
"No fucking way!"
Shale pulled his body out of the crater as fast as he could, and the sight before him when he emerged made his eyes widen in disbelief.
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!"
A voice filled with nothing but pure joy.
No anger, no hatred, not a single hint of a negative emotion.
Just pure unbridled joy.
