Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 286: Creation, Life, and Evolution
On the other side of the exit that Jamie had created lay a sunlit forest. Beams of light filtered through gaps in the trees, and droplets of morning dew shimmered on the grass.
The two of them walked forward, the woman humming a tune to herself.
"Oh my, this looks like water, but it’s actually liquefied magic power. How dense must the magic have been for it to liquefy in such a large quantity?"
The woman spoke as she crouched down to touch it, naturally pulling Jamie along with her, as she still clung to his arm.
"I recognize this."
"You do?"
Jamie asked, and she nodded.
"Touching it filled my head with an array of images that seem to be my memories."
She looked up at the sun through the gaps in the trees, a small smile tugging at her lips.
"My home world, this was.
The tale goes that a god died in battle against a demon. The magic power exuded from his corpse was so potent that it coagulated and formed this lake before us.
Mixed within the magic power were the powers of the world laws the god wielded—Creation, Life, and Evolution."
The woman spoke as she stared at the lake while Jamie expanded his spatial perception, detecting multiple settlements around the forest.
They were highly advanced cities.
"Did you come from one of the cities nearby?"
"No."
The woman answered, rising to her feet as she continued.
"I come from the lake before us."
Jamie’s brows lifted at her words. He turned his gaze toward the magic power lake, wondering what kind of creature could survive in such dense magic power during their early years.
It was then that he sensed something at the bottom of the lake—so infinitesimally small that he would have missed it if he hadn’t been actively searching.
It was the ONLY thing that could be considered ’living’ within the lake.
When he examined it closely...? 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
"...an amoeba?"
"Exactly."
The woman responded, before grabbing Jamie and jumping into the lake of magic power.
The energy washed over them, its pressure threatening to crush their bodies, but as soon as it sensed the woman beside Jamie, it calmed.
Just like in the previous room, the energy was absorbed into her body, and soon, they found themselves tumbling out of the lake and onto a battlefield.
"Ah yes, I remember this as well."
The woman said as she landed on the ground with ease, glancing around at the chaos of flashing lights and explosions.
"You remember this bloodbath?"
Jamie asked, taking in the scene of destruction and the thousands of soldiers being killed and absorbed by what appeared to be a ginormous slime.
The slime morphed parts of its body into tentacles. Adorning the lengths of these tentacles like branches on a stem were an array of arms—dragon arms, human arms, demon arms, giant arms, and more.
These arms were made of the same vicious material as the slime, and as each massive tentacle slammed into the ground and swept across the soldiers, crushing them with sheer size, the arms conjured magic circles and fired them, killing thousands more.
The battle concluded rather quickly, with the soldiers falling to the slime, only to have their bodies absorbed by it.
After consuming and dissolving them, the slime seemed to enter a dormant state, remaining still in silence.
The woman, with Jamie by her side, smiled at the sight, a hint of nostalgia in her eyes as she approached the slime.
When she reached it, she touched its gelatinous body and like before, the magic power that constituted it was absorbed into her.
Then, the world around them tore apart. The scenery shattered into tiny fragments like a broken mirror, before vanishing into the darkness.
"On to the next memory."
The woman spoke, pulling Jamie along as she walked through the darkness, seemingly knowing where to go despite the fact that there was no orientation within this darkness.
Eventually, they were engulfed in a brilliant white light and found themselves on yet another battlefield.
"Oh my. This is one of my worst memories. At least, from my early life."
Once again, thousands of people faced off against the massive slime from before. It had grown at least ten times its original size, and now, it had dozens of additional tentacles, each one writhing with immense power.
Like before, the tentacles were adorned with numerous arms, extending like branches from a tree stem. Some of these arms wielded weapons—swords, axes, spears—while others conjured swirling magic in the air, casting devastating spells.
The battle was brutal, with blood spilling across the battlefield, only to be absorbed by the slime, which seemed to grow stronger with every drop.
Eventually, the people fighting the slime seemed to realize that victory was impossible.
Some broke away from the main force and began to divide into two groups.
One group stepped forward while the rest stepped back.
The group that stepped back formed a circle around the slime and began chanting magic, while those who moved forward positioned themselves as shields, fending off the slime’s relentless attacks without hesitation, even as their limbs were torn asunder.
Some fell, their heads blasted from their bodies, but one of the casters at the rear used death magic to revive them as undead and sent them back into the fray.
This grim cycle continued until the chanters completed their spell, summoning a massive magic circle that floated above them, its power crackling in the air.
The dark clouds parted above, and from the skies, a blinding beam of pure magic power descended, striking the slime with the force of a heavenly wrath.
The slime let out a howl, a terrible, gut-wrenching scream as its gelatinous body began to burn under the intense beam.
Desperate to survive, the slime summoned every last ounce of magic power and law energy it possessed, unleashing creating and unleashing a counteracting force.
The energies clashed—one side burning with light, the other with the power of the slime that pushed back—and the world seemed to tremble.
The light of the beam intensified, while the slime’s resistance grew fiercer, until the two forces reached an overwhelming critical point.
This clash continued until both energies reached a critical point, and then exploded.
And then, they exploded.
The cataclysmic blast that followed was like a storm of destruction, a force so vast that it seemed to tear apart the very fabric of space around it.
When the light finally faded, Jamie found himself standing at the bottom of a crater so deep it seemed to stretch to the very core of the planet.
He turned his gaze to the side and saw what remained of the slime at the heart of the crater. Its mass had shrunk to less than a tenth of its former size, now bubbling and sizzling like scalding liquid.
Occasionally, Jamie could hear groans of agony echoing from its remains.
"Shall we head up?"
The woman beside him suggested. Jamie glanced upward, then teleported them to the edge of the spatial chamber they were in.
From there, they looked down upon the ’planet’ they were on.
A quarter of its spherical surface had been obliterated in the explosion, fragments scattered into space and forming a small ring that orbited the remains.
Moments later, a spacecraft arrived from the depths of space, and just then, the world around them fractured like glass.
"To the next memory."
The woman spoke again, pulling Jamie through the void that had been left behind and into the next memory.
In this way, they traversed a series of other recollections.
Jamie quietly observed as the story unfolded—how the spaceship that had arrived to investigate the cause of the explosion on the planet discovered the slime.
The ship’s crew sifted through the fragmented records of the planet and deduced that the battle with the slime had triggered the explosion. They then took the creature with them.
From there, they returned to their base of operations and began experimenting on the weakened slime.
They uncovered its inherent powers of life, creation, and evolution, and studied it relentlessly.
They extracted samples from its body, using them to create a great many things, including numerous biological weapons, which they employed to obliterate entire civilizations.
The experiments continued, with various substances injected into the slime, testing its reactions.
