Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 366: Memory Gap

No one could detect Angela’s existence anymore. No one knew where she had gone. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

[John and I managed to get a few things out of our stay here. For one, Mum didn’t run any experiments for about 45 days before she disappeared.]

Olivia’s projection expanded, revealing more of the lab around her, filled with all sorts of equipment that Richard couldn’t make heads or tails of, as she continued speaking.

[Honestly, it baffles me how, over a billion years ago, Mum had science so advanced it looked like magic. Hell, one of her machines made me think it was a magic artifact, and I actually tried pouring magic into it. Nearly broke the damn thing.]

She sighed, then tapped on a floating pane of glass, which revealed itself to be a monitor, and began scrolling through a list of files.

[According to the security cameras, she entered here—]

"Mum had security cameras in her lab??"

Richard cut her off with that question, his incredulous expression clearly showing how bizarre he found it.

But Olivia, turning back to him with a deadpan look, replied,

[Didn’t I just say Mum was ’forgetting’ things? The cameras obviously weren’t for intruders. They were for herself, so she wouldn’t forget what she was doing.]

As Richard nodded in understanding, Olivia continued.

[John and I have to go through thousands of hours of footage just to get some kind of idea of what she was doing, but anyway, based on what we’ve seen so far, Mum last entered this place on the same day the entire pocket dimension shook, like some kind of space quake had gone off.

The date was the 25th, Month 12, Year 498,000 of the 906th Cosmic Cycle.]

"...the day Mum disappeared," Richard muttered.

[Exactly. The day neither you, I, nor John have any memory of.]

Thus, another mystery was layered atop Angela’s already inexplicable disappearance.

Her children had no memory of the day it happened.

All three of them had been together on the 24th, but their memories cut off at 11:59 p.m., then resumed at 12:01 a.m. on the 26th.

Whatever had occurred in those missing 24 hours was the reason their mother vanished, and they had no clue what it was or why it happened.

"We finally find some leads, but the leads only give us more questions..."

Richard muttered with a sigh, and Olivia sighed too, clearly sharing his frustration. It hit even harder for her, being the one physically chasing these leads down.

[Her journals have some skips where she’d successfully pushed back against ’Chaos’, but it came back with full force after a while.]

The mention of Chaos reminded Richard of an incident that happened before even John and Olivia were born, when he had personally witnessed one of Angela’s tussles with the force of Chaos.

It was the only time he’d ever seen an expression of pure, unfiltered rage on Angela’s face.

When he’d asked his father what was going on, the man had simply said that Angela was too talented with Cosmic Power, and that such talent came with nasty side effects.

Maybe that so-called ’talent’ was why she could steal a Conceptual Authority without suffering backlash.

Or maybe it was because she was an Envoy of Chaos?

Well, she was Chaos’s unwilling favourite child, and an existence that Order despised just as much as Chaos itself, so it sort of made sense.

Chaos, being, well, Chaos, sought to use her as a vessel to extend its influence across the Cosmos, while Order, viewing her as ’tainted’ by Chaos through its rigid perspective, sought to eliminate her to prevent cosmic disorder.

Naturally, neither of the two Cosmic Forces had any regard for her opinion. Then again, they were quite literally ’forces of cosmic nature’. Expecting them to care about the will of a single existence was unrealistic at best.

Richard pressed his hands to his temples and shook his head.

"This isn’t something we should be discussing virtually. There’s currently a whole mess with the Neo-Extinction Legion and the Main Entities, so once I’m done with that, I’ll come to you. Send me your location."

As Richard said this, Olivia nodded and drew a rune in the air while muttering,

[Right, that whole mess Miranda caused. Oh well, not my problem.]

While she transmitted her location, Richard silently decided it was best not to mention that Miranda was nearby.

He wasn’t in the mood to watch two grown women call each other things like ’rabid dog’ and ’blood-sucking lizard.’

"Right, has John stopped bragging yet? Because if he hasn’t, then I’m not coming anywhere near you."

[Richard, you’re the first brother I’ve ever seen avoid his younger brother for thousands of years just because he bragged about reaching a new existence realm for a bit.]

"It was 30 days nonstop, Olivia! Thirty days every time he broke into a new Existence Realm Stage, throughout both the Lesser and main Supreme Realms!" Richard snapped back, clicking his tongue before adding,

"And no, I only avoided him for 30 years. He’s the one who kept bringing it up after that just to mess with me over and over again."

[So you sealed him inside a dimensional crack and just left him there?] Olivia asked, one brow raised.

"Yeah. Why didn’t he use his new Existence Realm to break out of it?"

Richard’s reply made Olivia roll her eyes at her older brother’s pettiness, especially since she knew full well that the seal he used was something even the most magic-focused Supreme would struggle to escape from, let alone John, whose talent for magic was laughably poor.

"I’m more concerned about how you even withstood his annoying bragging..."

At that, Olivia conjured a rune with the brightest smile Richard had seen from her in years and responded,

[Nothing too serious. I just perfected my ’Supreme Realm Power Negation Rune.’ One use, and even a Superior Stage Supreme becomes completely useless.]

"..."

Richard fell silent, unsure whether sealing John inside a dimensional crack was better or worse than Olivia creating an entirely new rune specialising in nullifying the power of a Supreme Realm existence.

"You know, Livia, sometimes you scar—..."

His words cut off abruptly as his sharp senses picked up a distant surge of magical energy, a full five seconds before Miranda noticed it.

"Hold on, Olivia. Something’s wrong."

Richard cut the transmission, and before Miranda could even ask why he was reacting that way, her watch started beeping, a red light flashing urgently.

When she glanced down at the text on the watch face, her expression darkened instantly.

By then, Richard had already formed a Gate to the location of the incident Miranda had just been alerted about, and without another word, the two of them stepped through.

◇　◇　◇

Maximum Security Prison 3B

Prison Realm 3

Zanerth-O1

July 9th

Year 2019

This Prison Realm was one of those orbiting the Omega Star Sea, where the Seat of the Zanerth Pantheon resided.

At present, however, it had been quite literally torn open.

One could liken it to a rubber ball in a room, the air around it representing ’space’, while the air inside the rubber ball symbolised the realm’s interior, a sealed-off pocket of space.

Now, it looked as if someone had stabbed the top of that ball with a blade and dragged it halfway around its surface, ripping it apart.

That was the state of Prison Realm 3 that greeted Miranda and Richard upon their arrival.

Planetary debris and cosmic energy spilt uncontrollably from the gash, while wardens exerted their full strength to contain the supernovae threatening to consume even more surrounding planets.

Among the many already destroyed was the planet where the former Main Entity of Death, Heilong, had been imprisoned.

|What nonsense is this?|

Miranda’s low, cold voice thundered down on all souls present as an oppressive aura erupted from her body, instantly snuffing out the supernovae and halting the ongoing destruction, yet still causing the entire realm to ’heat up’, with weaker prisoners collapsing from what could only be described as cosmic heatstrokes.

Several wounded, polymorphed Dragon Supremes were being tended to by others when Miranda’s gaze locked onto them, her pupils glowing.

|I demand an explanation.|

Cosmic energy waves crashed into them faster than they could react, slamming them against the fracturing dimensional walls of the realm and nearly choking the life out of them.

The pressure was so immense that even their incredibly durable scales began to fracture like glass under the weight.

Then, their souls were instantly overwhelmed by a searing heat, as if being roasted atop the blaze of a million stars, a heat that bypassed every protective layer surrounding those souls.