Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 289: Final Offering

Lapis was clearly in pain, yet she gritted her teeth and used her magic power to stabilize the cracking purple orb and seal it with her energy.

When her task was complete, she returned to the Alderson disk, her movements slow and heavy.

A vacant expression overtook her face as she silently dropped to her knees. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes, falling to the ground as she punched it in frustration.

As Jamie watched this scene in silence, the woman beside him began to speak. Her voice was unusually flat, lacking its typical liveliness.

"She believed her husband’s soul had been devoured and somehow trapped inside that thing, and she was desperately trying to retrieve it."

"...impossible."

Jamie muttered, continuing after a short silence.

"Souls are fundamentally energy.

When a soul is ’devoured,’ it’s converted into raw energy and absorbed by the being that consumed it. That energy gets distributed across the Devourer’s parameters according to the existential records of the Devoured.

Depending on the Realms of the Existences involved, even rewinding time cannot restore the soul. There’s no coming back from that."

Hearing Jamie’s words about souls, the woman turned to him with a wry smile. Her tone was laced with faint amusement as she responded.

"But isn’t there a saying about the universe being a place where anything can happen? What was it again...?"

She placed a hand on her chin, tilting her head thoughtfully. After a moment, her eyes lit up.

"Ah, yes. ’Nothing is impossible,’ wasn’t it?"

"..."

Jamie didn’t reply.

The woman chuckled, releasing Jamie’s arm and walking toward the Lapis in the memory. Kneeling before the weeping woman, she raised her hand to wipe away the tears, though her fingers passed right through Lapis’ intangible form.

"The further down we go into this realm, the more I recall.

This woman—her name is Lapis, correct? I remember hearing that name from some people."

She paused, a thoughtful expression crossing her face.

"I also recall her mentioning the ’Beast’ that devoured her husband’s soul. This Beast had a Soul-devouring ability that worked with different laws.

Apparently, she said this Beast could take on the form and abilities of those it devoured, not because it converted their souls to energy, but because it kept the souls inside its body and forcefully activated the abilities contained within them."

When she spoke up to that point, Jamie’s eyes lit up with realization, and he immediately grasped where she was heading with her theory.

"The Body and Soul are interconnected.

Using Skills as an example, a Skill is a rune on the soul, its effects manifested and displayed through the body.

So, if the Beast didn’t convert the soul to energy but instead kept them, it could theoretically force the abilities within the soul to activate and display them through its own body.

The devoured souls don’t have bodies, but if the devourer can connect to them and synchronize, making the devoured souls think the devourer’s body is theirs... it’s possible."

Jamie paused, the gears in his mind turning as he worked through what Universal laws would be necessary for this.

"Replication, Mimicry, Transformation, Harmony, Restoration, Life, Death, Polarity, Creation, Evolution... Fuck!"

He cursed at the end, his gaze shifting to the massive purple orb that Lapis had sealed with her power.

"This damn thing is emitting the energies of those laws!"

Upon hearing Jamie’s exclamation, the woman whose memory prison they were trapped in laughed softly and stood up.

"It seemed like a far-fetched theory at first, but once you thought it through, it started to make sense, didn’t it?

Your usual thought process wouldn’t have led you there, but that woman—clinging to the last shred of hope that her husband was still ’alive’ somewhere—was able to come up with it."

She walked up to Jamie, once again linking her arm with his as she spoke.

"Now then, shall we head to the final chamber in this prison of memories?"

"The final chamber?"

"Yes. At this point, there’s only one memory of mine left."

She pulled Jamie along, and as they moved, the world around them began to fracture like glass. Soon, it shattered completely, and they found themselves in an endless white expanse, much like the first chamber where Jamie and the woman had met.

However, unlike that space, there was something in the centre of this one.

"Another seemingly endless stretch of white, it seems. I’m beginning to dislike this colour."

She spoke as she stepped forward, dragging Jamie with her toward a pedestal in the middle of the room.

Hovering above it were ten purple orbs, each about the size of a basketball. They resembled the one from the Alderson disk, though they were much smaller.

"There used to be more of them. But many were destroyed upon my death."

As she spoke, the orbs began to spin around, orbiting one central sphere of light at the centre. The light from this sphere was so intense that Jamie couldn’t discern its true form beneath its blinding radiance.

The ten purple orbs orbited one another in a precise, synchronized dance, like neutron stars caught in mutual gravity, spiralling ever closer as they moved faster and faster.

"That woman, Lapis, harvested many of them and conducted extensive experiments, probing each one to see if her husband’s soul was trapped inside."

The speed of their orbit accelerated, and the orbs began drawing closer to the central ball of light, their motion becoming a blur. Then, with an explosive collision, they struck the light at the centre.

"A pity. No matter how much she searched, she could never find the main one.

That was only natural.

’I’ never wanted anyone to find it."

The collision sent out waves of energy and light, akin to a burst from a neutron star collision, lighting up the entire space in a blinding flash. Jamie instinctively closed his eyes, shielding himself from the overwhelming brightness.

The surge of energy radiated out with the power to obliterate millions of planets, yet the space around them withstood the blast effortlessly.

Jamie and the woman also remained unharmed, though he conjured a cosmic energy barrier to protect them.

As the light finally faded, what remained was a single, non-beating heart. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"Here we are. The Centre of this Prison of Memories.

Before you lies the Core of it all. The source of all these memories... My Heart."

The woman spoke, her gaze fixed on the silent organ hovering in the air before them.

Jamie, standing beside her, could feel the immense power radiating from the heart, enough to reduce the entire Pinecone Galaxy to nothing but cosmic dust multiple times over.

"Destroying this would destroy this Prison..."

Turning to the woman still holding onto his arm, Jamie asked.

"...is that right, Amorphous Space Beast?"

The woman smiled brightly at the title, releasing his hand as she stepped forward, her fingers closing around the floating heart.

She turned back to face him, offering it up as she answered.

"Indeed. Destroying it would end it all."

She didn’t contest his choice of words.

There was no need to.

After all, Jamie’s words were the truth.

The woman whose memories he had been exploring all this time was, in fact, the greatest threat in Pinecone’s history.

The strongest Space Beast ever recorded.

And now, she was willingly offering him her heart.