Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 292: Jamie’s Decision
’But do I really care about all that?’
Jamie asked himself this.
He wasn’t the kind of person to dissect morality or weigh motives.
Reminding himself of this—
"You want to be remembered, huh?"
—Jamie made his decision.
"Okay. That’s fine. I’ll remember you."
He stepped forward, the distance between them vanishing in an instant. Before she could react, his hand shot out, faster than her instincts could warn her, and closed around the heart she held.
"What are you—?!"
She tried to yank it away, panic flashing across her face, but it was a futile effort. Jamie’s grip wasn’t something she could break out of so easily.
Faint, multi-coloured tendrils of cosmic energy began to seep from his arm, latching onto the heart like ethereal vines.
"You see, this little trinket of yours—I’ll be taking it. I’m currently in need of a rather large energy source, and this fits the bill perfectly."
Her eyes widened, a mix of shock and recognition dawning on her as she felt the unmistakable energy of the Law of Absorption radiating from him.
It was a law she knew intimately; one she had mastered through the horrifying process of devouring countless souls. The fact that Jamie had such a level of mastery over it both surprised and unnerved her.
"You... You’ve mastered the Law of Absorption?" she managed to say, her voice tinged with disbelief.
Jamie’s gaze remained impassive, his grip on the heart tightening as the energy exchange grew more pronounced.
"I’ve been around long enough to dabble in a LOT of things."
The cosmic energy wove itself deeper into the heart, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation she knew far too well:
Helplessness.
Once again, she couldn’t determine her own fate.
"...what are you going to do?"
She whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and defiance.
Jamie didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he focused on the task at hand, his eyes glowing faintly as he manipulated his cosmic energy.
Finally, he raised his head and met her gaze, his face wearing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
"My final decision on what to do with you depends entirely on whether or not certain souls are where I want them to be."
The ASB flinched but said nothing, her expression a tense mix of fear and resignation.
The ten energy cores she had fused into her heart weren’t all of her cores. A great many remained in her body, deliberately left there to draw in countless Space Beasts, containing the threat they posed to one location.
Some of those cores were still intact, the same ones Lapis had been extracting one by one and experimenting on within the Alderson disk Jamie had glimpsed in her memories.
Her energy cores weren’t just power sources—they were recorders. They captured everything that occurred around them and everything done to them, their contents later merging with her soul’s memories.
When Lapis brought the cores to the Amphitheatre where her dormant soul lingered, those fragmented records merged.
Jamie didn’t know how she had managed to get these ten cores into this dimension, but what mattered was that she had succeeded. And because of that, she knew everything Lapis had been doing and was able to share those memories with Jamie.
Of course, some of her cores had been destroyed during the years of experimentation by Lapis, but these ten she recovered give her plenty of information.
"There are many cores remaining in your corpse. If the souls of Cassiel and the others are still in one of those, you’d know.
You said it yourself—if you were reconnected to your body, you’d be able to find out where the souls you devoured went.
That means you already know exactly how to locate them."
As he said that, Jamie’s gaze dropped to the heart in his hand. It was empty, devoid of any souls as far as he could tell.
Hearing his words, the woman swallowed hard, but she didn’t speak, her silence a tacit admission.
Jamie exhaled slowly, his grip on the heart tightening as more cosmic energy poured out of his body.
"For now, I’ll give you the sweet release you’re looking for. But..."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping a pitch lower.
"If the particular souls I’m after aren’t where I want them to be... well, let’s just say I might pay a little visit to the Underworld Dimension to fish out a specific soul."
"..."
Her breath hitched, but she said nothing, her eyes fixed on him in growing dread.
"Relax," Jamie continued, his tone darkly casual. "Quite a few of the Underworld’s managers happen to work for me."
The moment the last words escaped his lips, a clicking sound echoed through the chamber. Then, Jamie’s cosmic energy wrapped around the both of them.
|Imperial Privileges: First and Third Privilege—Creation and Reality. |
The words were barely out of his mouth when the dimensional space around them cracked and imploded.
Reality itself warped as the oppressive force of Jamie’s power shattered the prison of memories, ripping it apart in a blinding flash of light.
◇ ◇ ◇
The Amphitheatre of Eternity was abuzz with confusion.
The opening ceremony and the day’s battles had concluded, but the unexpected arrival of three of the Six Mythical Hybrids and their unprecedented actions had left everyone reeling.
Lapis Argeryan pressed her fingers to her temples, as if trying to soothe the headache that John and Olivia’s appearance was already causing.
When one of her Vampire King subordinates questioned her regarding the three teenagers Jamie had left behind, she snapped back a response.
"Put them under constant surveillance. No hair on their heads should go missing."
Before the subordinate could respond, the entire Amphitheatre trembled violently.
Everyone sensed a ripple in the fabric of space, preceding an explosion of energy that erupted from deep within the Amphitheatre, cascading outward in a wave that spread across light-years of space.
The shockwave was so intense that it sent even the strongest beings in the Amphitheatre staggering.
Gasps and murmurs filled the air as the energy continued to surge, washing over the entire structure before suddenly receding into the Amphitheatre and vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
"What... What just happened?"
No one knew who asked that question.
Lapis’ expression hardened, her royal blue eyes narrowing as she scanned the area. Her instincts told her that Jamie was at the heart of this disturbance.
Clenching her fists, she barked out new orders, her voice carrying over the growing panic. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
"Find out what caused that energy surge. Now!"
As her subordinates scrambled to obey, Lapis remained rooted in place, her thoughts racing.
She had a sinking feeling whatever had just happened was the precursor for more trouble.
Trouble she didn’t need at this point in time.
◇ ◇ ◇
Within a rather popular area in the Pinecone Galaxy, a figure hovered in the void of space, their presence veiled by the shadow cast upon a nearby planet by the large thing beside them.
Their gaze was locked in the direction of the Amphitheatre of Eternity, a flicker of frustration crossing their expression as the residual energy from the recent surge prickled at their senses.
"What the hell was that?!"
The energy ripple had been immense—unsettling, even—but it wasn’t its immensity that caught their attention.
It was the signature.
A signature they hadn’t expected to encounter.
"That’s the Amorphous Space Beast’s energy, no doubt about it. But why the hell is that energy coming from the Amphitheatre of Eternity of all places?"
