Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 287: The Purple Core

They used countless methods to force the creature under their control, taking it to different worlds and forcing it to consume and dissolve billions of people, increasing its mass.

This mass was then harvested for further experiments, with more substances introduced, all aimed at mastering the creature.

This cycle continued—dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Jamie watched it all impassively, noting how the slime, once a creature of instinct, gradually became more self-aware.

Eventually, it began to curse its captors, resentment simmering beneath its surface.

Then, one fateful day, as it was forced to devour the inhabitants of a Prime World, it saw an opportunity for vengeance.

The slime liquefied its body into a viscous sludge, sending it surging across the continents like an unstoppable tsunami.

It then detached a portion of itself, sending it into a volcano it surged over, where it burrowed deep into the planet. As it descended, it consumed the magma along the way, eventually reaching the outer core, and finally, the planet’s inner core.

To gain power, the slime devoured the planet’s core, absorbing its energy.

Naturally, the planet couldn’t survive without its core, and it began to break apart.

Amid the chaos, the slime reconnected the part of its body that had absorbed the core with its main mass, allowing the immense energy from the core to flow through its entire form.

This energy overloaded the magical restraints and several control spells placed on it by its captors. The surge of freedom granted the slime just enough leeway to devour those who controlled the other restraining spells, gaining even more autonomy in the process.

It had been bound by hundreds of control spells, each one controlled by a different individual.

Exploiting the chaos, the slime slaughtered more than a third of those who held the spells. With its newfound freedom, it withstood the backlash of defying its captors and killed even more of them.

That day, a Prime World was obliterated, and with it, the slime’s captors perished.

But its freedom was fleeting.

The destruction of the planet released an immense burst of energy through space, and in its aftermath, the planet’s many moons were sent hurtling through the solar system, colliding with other moons and triggering extinction events on nearby planets.

The chaos drew the attention of interstellar superpowers from nearby star systems. When they arrived to investigate, the slime attempted to attack, but before it could, another force struck first.

To be precise, it was a single person. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

A foreign entity, appearing as little more than a distorted humanoid mass within the memories Jamie watched, emerged and obliterated the spaceships of the investigating interstellar powers.

With their destructive power, they turned everything in their path—except the slime—into dust.

Turning its gaze upon the slime, the entity offered it two choices:

’Submit or Be Destroyed.’

Driven by the instinct to survive, the slime chose to submit.

Despite its recent freedom from one set of captors, it had unwittingly fallen into the grasp of another—an even more terrifying one.

It was revealed that this new figure had been observing the slime’s original captors for years, and now that the slime had broken free, the time had come for the entity to act.

◇　◇　◇

When the memories reached that point, the woman with Jamie let out a sigh and pressed her hand to her temples.

"Can we pause for a bit? Flooding my head with so many memories in such a short time isn’t exactly kind to my brain."

She finally released Jamie’s arm, which she had been holding since the beginning, and sank to the ground in the darkness.

Jamie silently moved forward, his gaze scanning the collapsing space for an exit.

Noticing that Jamie was walking off without her, the woman gave a wry smile and shook her head. She quickly stood up and ran after him, grabbing his arm again as he stepped out of the collapsing space.

They were enveloped in white light, and when it faded, they found themselves in a room entirely bathed in white, which appeared to be some sort of laboratory.

The hum of machinery filled the air as hundreds of individuals moved through the space, tending to various tasks.

Jamie’s gaze drifted to a desk pressed against a nearby wall, cluttered with stacks of papers and digital files. Among the documents, his eyes caught a symbol he recognized all too well.

It was one that belonged to a certain group of ’Cultists’ he disliked.

The Creator Society.

His eyes narrowed, and he turned his focus toward the far end of the laboratory where a giant reinforced gate stood.

The woman beside him noticed the gate as well. For a brief moment, a flicker of unease crossed her face, but it was gone almost instantly, replaced by her usual calm demeanour.

She then glanced at Jamie with a smile and asked.

"Shall we?"

Jamie, giving no outward sign that he had noticed her little slip in composure, nodded silently and began walking towards the gate.

As they passed through, the sight that unfolded before them stopped them both in their tracks. Their eyes widened, and their jaws slackened in awe.

"An Alderson disk..."

The woman turned to Jamie, startled.

"You know what that thing is called?"

The woman’s voice carried clear surprise at Jamie’s identification of the structure, and he nodded in response, recalling that the humans of the Original Earth had indeed called the megastructure before his eyes an ’Alderson Disk’.

It was a colossal, platter-shaped construct, several thousand miles thick. At its centre, nestled within a massive circular hole, hovered an orb of energy the size of a star.

The orb emitted a vivid purple glow, and from its surface extended millions of enormous, planet-sized cables that tethered it to the disk, connected like arteries feeding a colossal heart.

Jamie and the woman stood on what appeared to be a docking platform, where spacecraft continuously launched toward the disk like ants marching towards a mountain.

Raising his hand, Jamie clenched the air as though gripping something solid. He grabbed hold of the fabric of space and pulled it like cloth, pulling their destination closer.

With that action, the enormous distance between them and the disk vanished, and a single step carried them onto the top of a spacecraft flying toward the structure.

Suddenly, the scenery dissolved into fragments, shattering like glass around them. They transitioned seamlessly into the next spatial chamber and found themselves standing within the Alderson disk itself.

Massive observation windows stretched before them, offering a clear view of the orb of energy at the disk’s centre.

Upon closer analysis, Jamie was able to confirm what he had suspected the moment they saw this Alderson disk.

The colossal sphere of energy at the centre of the disk wasn’t a star.

It was merely the size of one.

As they walked forward, the ’memories’ flickered into existence around them, revealing scenes of scientists bustling about, carrying reports and performing various tasks to analyse the orb at the disk’s centre.

"Do you recall this?"

The woman’s eyes widened slightly at Jamie’s unexpected question.

Since they had started navigating this labyrinth of her memories, Jamie had not exactly spoken much.

In fact, she could count on one hand the number of times he had spoken since witnessing the first memory. Despite her own frequent comments, his responses had been limited to nods or simple gestures.

But now, with Jamie initiating the conversation, she quickly shook off her surprise, pulling him closer to the observation screen as she replied.

"Yes, I recall some faint images. I suppose these rapidly shifting scenes around us are mirroring what I remember."

She pulled him closer until they were nearly pressed against the observation glass.

"What I do remember is that these people in white coats were attempting to revive some dead people."

"Revive dead people?"

Jamie parroted her words and she nodded, a faint smile on her lips as she pointed toward the massive orb at the centre of the Alderson disk.

"To be specific, they were trying to revive the dead who are somehow trapped inside that thing."

Jamie’s gaze followed her finger, locking onto the glowing orb. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized it.

"That’s an Energy Core. Why would there be dead people inside an energy core?"

Hearing his question, the woman tilted her head slightly, blinking in confusion as she asked.

"How do you know it’s an energy core? Given its size, I assumed it was some kind of star. As far as I remember, there are different types of stars, aren’t there?"