Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 68: Racial Factors, Hot Wings and RPGs

Without waiting for anyone to even say anything, Miranda generated life and death universal law energies from her body, grabbing Pirantu’s head faster than the dragon could react and injecting the energies into the other woman’s head.

Jamie just watched her in silence whilst slowly putting his palm down and shrugging his shoulders.

A few minutes later, Miranda had extracted all she wanted to know and Pirantu was once again rendered unconscious, something the Hybrid could not care less about.

The only memories she could access were those within the soul fragment she searched, and even then, she had not gone through everything, only selecting what she wanted to know and leaving the rest.

"Oh wow, you’re quite hated, Jay."

Those were the first things she said after that and Jaimie only looked up from the TV in silence, giving her a gaze that asked why she was saying that like it was something new.

Miranda returned her body to the couch and detailed the information she had gotten from Pirantu’s memories.

"Basically, she was patrolling the planet while looking for a suitable place to set down some strange construct that Ikerth sent her to handle.

When you ran down the mountain earlier, she happened to be in the area and noticed you.

After what I can only describe as a mental tug of war to resist the instinctive urge to attack you in a fit of rage, she returned to their base to get something they had been developing to deal with you in particular.

That Railgun itself wasn’t anything special, it’s the shells that are the problem. Each one contains a mixture of Vampire and Werewolf Slayer race factors, with their anti-regenerative factors being enhanced to the limit.

Since we possess a high concentration of both Vampire and Werewolf factors, the bullets are able to temporarily negate our regeneration for a while—about half a day from what I saw."

The term ’Slayer Race’ had been tossed around for a while, so it was high time a bit of light was shed onto it.

But before that, ’Racial Factors’ needed to be touched on a bit.

Explaining Racial Factors could not be any simpler.

Take Person A; he was born a human. Thus, Person A has Human Racial Factors. The end.

Every being possessed Racial Factors of whatever race they were from, even if they were halflings.

It was these racial factors that the System read and displayed in the Race tab of someone’s status.

Racial Factors also possessed different traits depending on one’s race, this was where the special characteristics of races, certain strengths and weaknesses they possessed came from.

Anyway, Jamie and Miranda who were both Vampire/Werewolf Hybrids, possessed factors of those two races in great quantities, but not 50-50 as one would initially imagine.

Explaining the constituent percentages of racial factors in the two was a matter best left for another day, as the matter of Slayer Races was more important right now.

Slayer Races were as their names implied. They were Races born to ’Slay’ other races.

A simple example would be a Dragon, and a Dragonslayer. Not a being possessing the ’title’ of ’Dragon Slayer’, but one whose race was ’Dragonslayer’.

The special characteristics of a Dragonslayer’s racial factors granted them abilities that were inherently advantageous over beings who had Dragon Racial factors.

In a way, they had ’Anti-Dragon Factors’.

All their attacks against Dragons were stronger than normal, they took less damage against dragons, and if they were strong enough, their mere presences could reduce the Existence Realms of their target dragons!

Anything they did ’Against’ dragons was amplified and anything dragons did ’Against’ them was greatly reduced in efficiency.

This logic applied to all slayer races, including that of the Vampires and Werewolves.

The fact that Jamie and Miranda who were born as werewolves were infused with Vampiric Bloodlines established it was possible to harness Racial Factors and use them for other means.

With that said, how the shells that Pirantu attacked Jamie with came to be could be easily guessed.

Miranda took off her fascinator and unfurled her ponytail, letting her hair fall down her shoulders as she stretched her arms before speaking.

"Regarding why she attacked you; she simply did that with the intent to kill ’your avatar’ so you’d not be able to achieve whatever you came to this world for. As simple as that.

She also did not inform any of her direct clan members that she had seen you so they only know she took the shells they had developed and vanished somewhere.

But like we said earlier, it would not be long before someone figures out what’s up."

The woman took off her shoes and pulled her feet up to the couch, before leaning in on Jamie’s body as she concluded her words.

"When we’re done messing up Ikerth’s life here, I’d go over to their main base and destroy the rest of the shells they have; which are not much by the way."

"I’d leave that to you then."

Since Miranda said she was going to handle the matter personally, Jamie decided to leave it up to her.

Leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t the first time they’d encountered this kind of situation, Jamie could tell that Miranda seemed to have had her eye on Ikerth and Zotov for a while, given she had spies amongst his men who were in fairly high-up positions.

The two remained in the room after Miranda had her subordinates move Pirantu elsewhere before leaving, randomly switching between TV stations until Jamie remembered that he had intended to get some Hot Wings.

At Jamie’s insistence, the two went out of the Apartment Complex and headed for a nearby restaurant Miranda found using her phone’s maps, and Jamie ordered his hot wings as planned.

Even after eating quite a lot, he had some sent over to the apartment for him to eat later in the night, before pulling Miranda along with him to explore the city’s nightlife.

The neon-lit high-rise buildings and skyscrapers created a vibrant electrified tapestry against the dark canvas of the starry night sky, matching with a river of headlights flowing through the bustling streets below.

Looking at it, you would not think that this was a world that was under threat of domination by a Red Dragon and his interstellar forces. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Jamie’s attention was grabbed by a building topped with a giant bowling pin, and inside was a famous entertainment complex where one could play bowling, darts, billiards, karaoke, etc.

He and Miranda entered, and spent a few hours there, with Jamie learning to play as many games as he possibly could within the given time, taking a particular fancy to the console games.

In the end, Miranda was only able to pull him out by informing him that she had one of said consoles in her apartment.

They returned to the building at some time close to 10 pm, and had their baths to wash off the little sweat that moving around had worked up, after which they returned to gaming; whilst snacking on the Hot Wings they had ordered earlier.

◇ ◇ ◇

[I’m sorry Hero, but my allegiance lies with the Evil Lord.]

"Wait...what?!"

"Ugh... I never thought he would betray us."

Both Jamie and Miranda were equally dumbfounded when one of the closest allies of the Hero of the game they were playing, someone who had been with them since childhood, suddenly switched sides to the enemies.

Miranda hung her head low as she begrudgingly selected another character to control since the character’s betrayal had locked that one and prevented the player from using them in battle again—at least until the main quest ended.

"But why? What’s the reason for the sudden betrayal?!"

"Maybe he has some family who are being held hostage? That’s a staple for these kinds of games."

"That’s normal? What have the worlds turned to in the past 12 millennia?"

Jamie’s grip on the controller loosened and the device fell to the ground as she was shocked by this newfound discovery.

"Pfft...stop being so dramatic."

Miranda commented with a light chuckle while getting up to pick up their food from the microwave, returning a moment later with a bucket of chicken wings.

"All right, we’re halfway through the game. Let’s just carry on. The reason for the betrayal would be revealed soon enough."

Like so, they played the game continuously for the next two hours while snacking occasionally, eventually reaching the last boss sometime close to midnight.

"Heal! Mira, Heal!"

"Gimme a sec...Boss’s debuff switched up my controls!"

"No, I can’t wait, I have to... oh! I’m dead!"

Eventually, Jamie’s character who had been running from the boss was blown away by an attack and fell limp.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!? How do you wanna maintain the front line if the vanguard is down?!"

Miranda complained as he hurriedly switched the game item that she was using to one for revival.

"The thing’s too damn strong okay?!"

"Of course, it is, that’s the last boss! In times like this, you have to act as a wall to protect the front line!"

"I don’t want to play like that without exhilaration! I’m the main character!"

"What are you going to do if you, the main character, die?"

As they argued, Miranda revived Jamie with an item and also had to physically hold him to prevent him from jumping recklessly into the battle once more.

Eventually, they succeeded in defeating the boss after several dozen minutes of desperate struggle. However, even after they had dealt the last blow, the usual Battle completion fanfare didn’t ring out.

"...Is he really dead?"

"Jamie?! Never say those words! They might as well be a revival spell!"

Proving Miranda right in the next second was the boss that suddenly got back up and morphed into a fourth form that they had certainly not expected.

Naturally, after struggling with the previous three, their characters were too exhausted to handle the fourth and they naturally lost miserably.

""Nooo!!!""

The two screamed out in synchrony as they saw the word ’DEFEAT’, appear on the TV screen.

"I’m done! The Devs of this game are crazy!"

Miranda exclaimed whilst tossing the controller aside, exhaling heavily as she let her body fall onto Jamie’s, ending up with her head on his lap.

"But still, who would have expected that guy to also betray the Evil Lord and usurp his position? That’s one plot twist I never expected."

Jamie commented as he dropped his controller on the centre table before turning his gaze down to Miranda who was now playing with strands of his hair.

The TV’s display changed to the RPG game’s loading screen, but it went ignored, given that both their focuses were now elsewhere. Miranda was trying to plait a few strands of Jamie’s hair while the man was only silently staring at her.

Eventually, she rose her upper body and sat on his lap while seriously concentrating on trying to change his hairstyle to one she saw in a magazine some weeks earlier.

However, this concentration broke within the next minute when Jamie suddenly leaned in and captured her lips with his.