Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 314: The END of Jokes [April Fool’s Bonus]
Distant planets trembled under the aftershocks, their atmospheres thrown into turmoil, while solar storms flared across nearby stars, disrupting their magnetic fields.
Flying through the chaos without so much as a scratch, Aikess lunged forward, their talon stretching out and clamping onto Jamie just as he was about to summon a void portal to consume all the energy.
Their powerful claws tore through his clothes and dug into his skin, drawing blood—but the moment Jamie’s blood sprayed out, Aikess immediately regretted their decision.
The crimson liquid didn’t merely drip—it shot out with the force of a geyser, forming razor-sharp spears that pierced through the scales on their legs, stabbing straight into the bone beneath.
Grunting in pain, Aikess instinctively released Jamie, and in the blink of an eye, his wounds healed.
Without wasting a second, he collapsed spacetime itself, conjuring a black hole that devoured every last trace of the hypernovae’s energy.
Then, all at once, that accumulated power was expelled violently as a concentrated beam of destruction, aimed directly at Aikess’ chest.
The Phoenix quickly crossed their wings in front of their body, shielding themselves as the blinding explosion engulfed them. When the light faded, only a few broken feathers marked the damage.
|Hah! That all y—|
**SHUNK!
|Gghh!!|
Aikess’ taunt instantly transformed into a groan of pain as a single bullet of compressed void energy tore through the air and punctured straight through Aikess’ wings, piercing their chest.
They recoiled, coughing out embers, but even as pain lanced through their body, their beak snapped open, unleashing a roaring laser of concentrated extinction law energy straight at Jamie.
Facing this, Jamie conjured a void sphere before him and flicked his fingers. The sphere unleashed a countering beam of void energy that collided head-on with the Phoenix’s extinction laser.
As the two forces clashed in a violent struggle for dominance, Jamie teleported beneath Aikess and delivered an uppercut to the underside of their beak, forcefully snapping it shut with an audible crack.
In that same moment, several of Aikess’ feathers ripped free from their wings, flame swirling around them as they shot toward Jamie at lightspeed.
The man snapped his left thumb and ring fingers, and space expanded around him, stretching the distance those feathers had to cross by an entire light-year.
In the extra moment he had gained, his right fist crackled with lightning as he clenched it tight and punched the Phoenix’s chest before they could escape.
The impact shattered space once more, tearing open another dimensional crack that blasted the Phoenix back into the Knesix Dimension.
The sheer force sent Aikess hurtling in a random direction through the void, their body twisting and tumbling uncontrollably.
Jamie followed into the crack, re-emerging in the space between Kaelithis and its neighbouring planet. He waved his hand to seal the dimensional crack behind him, then glanced around and sighed.
He raised his right hand, and in his true voice, he commanded.
|Imperial Privileges; Fifth Privilege: Time.|
A luminous blue ring with the numbers of a clock etched on it materialized around his right arm.
Jamie then clenched his fist and twisted his forearm counterclockwise. Instantly, the devastating effects of the brief existence of an extra star in the star system began to reverse.
The host star’s magnetic field stabilized. The disrupted orbits of inhabited planets reverted to their natural courses. Even the planets that had started melting re-solidified, as time erased the damage.
However, the uninhabited planets in the system remained untouched. Jamie didn’t particularly care about them.
Just as he finished restoring balance, a sudden and powerful burst of energy erupted from the far side of Kaelithis—the region currently facing away from its host star.
His gaze snapped in that direction, piercing through space, and he saw a massive rift tearing open.
For the record, he had absolutely nothing to do with this.
All he had done was reverse the planetary damage. He hadn’t reversed time in general.
So if someone had already been in the middle of doing something insane when he activated his Imperial Privilege, they would still be doing that insane thing that was now causing chaos on Kaelithis’ far side.
The space stations orbiting the planet had multiple ships docked within them. Inside those stations were wormholes designed to transport people to the planet’s surface.
But for some reason, the spaceships on the stations on that side of the planet—ships Jamie had ensured were stable before smacking Aikess out of Knesix—veered off course, crashed into the stations, and erupted into explosions.
The wormholes, caught in the chaos, were flooded with a ludicrous amount of energy, expanding far beyond their intended limits.
Their instability grew in tandem with their size, and when they finally collided with each other, the chain reaction triggered an explosive rupture, sending a colossal surge of energy rippling through space.
It was this rupture that Jamie had sensed. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
Jamie was about to teleport to the site when a True Voice reverberated through the void, speaking words that made his hair stand on end.
|Authority of the END: Finality’s Flame!|
|?!|
Jamie’s head snapped around just in time to see a colossal beam of flames hurtling toward him at a terrifying speed.
With only seconds to react, he quickly activated his Ultimate Skill.
|Azure Void Authority!|
Space distorted to form portals from which dark blue void energy surged out to meet the oncoming beam of extinction law energy.
The two opposing forces clashed violently, consuming each other in absolute annihilation. In the aftermath, all that remained was a small, ruptured scar in reality, a wound in the fabric of existence itself.
|...|
Jamie glanced at the lingering scar before shifting his gaze to the Phoenix who had just attacked him. Wordlessly, he extended his right hand and the Galaxy Sword materialized instantly.
Aikess, who had been about to launch a follow-up attack, froze mid-motion. For the first time, a flicker of fear crept into their eyes.
’Oh, shit.’
They instantly realized they had gone too far.
And just as that realisation dawned, Jamie uttered words that sent a chill down their spine.
|It seems I’m having grilled chicken for dinner tonight.|
|!!|
Aikess flapped their wings and instinctively backed away, their voice taking on a frantic, pleading tone.
|Dude, calm down. I was just joking.|
|You jokingly used an Authority meant to delete things from existence?|
Aikess stiffened at Jamie’s question.
The reason for Jamie’s sudden shift in demeanour was the fact that Aikess had used their Authority of the END.
This was their Authority as a Beast of the END, intended to bring an END to old galaxies and enormous celestial bodies before they reached the ends of their natural lifespans and collapsed, causing untold devastations in their final, explosive moments.
Throughout this entire ’fight,’ neither of them had ever used an Authority offensively. Even when Jamie activated his Space, Time and Gravity Authorities earlier, it had been solely to protect the star system’s inhabitants.
Even the void energy he had used was at such a low concentration that Aikess would heal from their wounds in mere months—an insignificant recovery period considering the nature of void-inflicted injuries.
Because, at the end of the day, Jamie had still been treating this as a joke.
They had both just been playing around.
But invoking an Authority of the END in an attack? Nahh...that wasn’t a joke anymore.
|...it was an honest mistake.|
|Say that to the judges in the underworld.|
Jamie responded instantly, raising his sword as cosmic energy surged into the blade. Aikess’ flames flared up defensively, but just as Jamie was about to strike—he suddenly froze, and his gaze snapped toward Kaelithis.
|Dude, let’s talk this ou-|
|Shut up for a second.|
|?!|
Aikess’ eyes widened at the shift in Jamie’s tone. Moments ago, even with the Galaxy Sword in hand, Jamie was technically still joking. But now, he was dead serious.
’The barrier I placed... has been destroyed.’
The energy within the Galaxy Sword dimmed as Jamie swung the blade, slicing through space. A rift tore open before him and he stepped through, emerging on the surface of Kaelithis.
He appeared right above the empty Summoners’ Tournament arena and dashed straight towards the seating area, phasing through the reinforced glass viewing window and into a private booth.
It was the one where David, Davina, and Wanete had been watching the tournament.
Jamie had explicitly told them NOT to leave this booth.
Even when the Void Leviathan and Aikess had appeared, even when the arena was being evacuated amid the chaos of battle, they had stayed put.
Not just because they trusted Jamie, but because they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to.
Jamie had placed a barrier around the booth to protect them. Said barrier also sealed them inside it.
Within that barrier, they were untouched by the aftershocks of the fight between Aikess and the Void Leviathan.
No tremors, no stray energy waves. Nothing reached them.
But now, that barrier was broken.
Normally, Jamie would have been alerted the moment it was destroyed, but in his current state, the signal hadn’t been instantaneous—it had travelled at light speed.
And Light, regardless of how fast it was, took time to get to places.
What’s more, the breach happened while Jamie had been outside the Knesix dimension. And when he returned, he had been at a distance where even light would need minutes to reach him.
It was only just now, as he was about to swing his sword, that the signal finally arrived.
The moment it did, he rushed back, only to find the room in a mess.
Cracks lined the walls. Blood stained the floor. Chairs and tables lay overturned.
David and Wanete were on the floor, unconscious.
Davina...was missing.
