Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 373: Miranda’s Quest

"What’s this? An Isolation Field?"

The moment Miranda discovered the expanding isolation field, she didn’t immediately attempt to break it.

She first paused to analyse it, assessing the barrier’s strength and whether the force she had told Richard to send after her could detect or bypass it.

She examined the cosmic energy density, scanning the area to measure how thick and concentrated the energy was across the vast regions of the barrier. She also gauged the Authority she could sense within it.

The barrier wasn’t created from nothing but constructed using Cosmic Energy. However, what Authority commanded that energy, and at what level was it at? She assessed that as well.

After evaluating these factors, she concluded that even a Supreme Realm existence would struggle to detect the ZWF4105 cluster if the isolation barrier covered it entirely.

Only after that analysis did Miranda attempt to break the barrier.

Since she’d deduced that even a Supreme Realm would have an issue seeing through it, she didn’t rely solely on her Aspectual Authorities and activated her Concretizations, skipping the First and Second and going directly to the Third, Aspect Armament.

Clad in a cloak of flames, she channelled her universal law energy-burning power to disrupt the barrier.

Initially, her flames halted the barrier’s formation.

However, the Authority within the barrier persisted, continuing its construction and eventually overcoming her flames. The barrier drew in ambient cosmic energy faster than she could feed into her flames, absorbing more than her initial energy output and continuing its formation.

Hence, the reason she’d reacted with surprise and said, "Huh? I can’t break it," though her words were interrupted as the barrier continued expanding and disrupted all communication signals.

Now Miranda had to make a split-second decision.

She could either remain within the cluster’s gravitational field and risk being trapped by the isolation barrier, cutting herself off from the rest of the multiverse, since this barrier was likely capable of concealing the entire cluster from detection by conventional spatial manipulation, or she could escape the cluster entirely and avoid getting involved in whatever was unfolding there.

However, the latter option would also mean remaining unaware of whatever these individuals were planning, that they were willing to go so far as to deploy an isolation barrier spanning twelve entire universes.

In the short time before the isolation barrier fully enclosed the cluster and the approaching Supreme Realm existences Miranda had sensed, likely forces reacting to her attempt to halt the barrier and the way it had been forced to absorb more cosmic energy than intended, arrived on the scene, Miranda had to make a decision.

A second passed, and Miranda retracted her flames as she plunged her hand into her pocket dimension and pulled out a random spaceship.

It was one of countless ships stored in there, likely untouched for millions of years since she’d last actually needed it. She manipulated the pocket-dimensional realm, willed the ship into her grasp, and pulled it out.

She immediately hurled the spaceship at the expanding barrier, and it exploded instantly upon contact with the rapidly spreading wave of cosmic energy.

As it exploded, she concealed her energy and dove into the nearest universe, moving just as the auras of the approaching Supreme Realm existences swept through the surrounding space, searching for anyone in the area.

Though she couldn’t hear their words, Miranda silently observed from a direction in space that they couldn’t perceive, watching as they discovered the wreckage and debris of the destroyed ship.

|Are you kidding me? Someone tried to leave? Now of all times? They better not have contacted anyone on the outside,| one of them said.

|Well, we can just check the black box to see if—Ah, never mind. It’s completely trashed. There’s nothing we can do about it. Damn, Isolation Field is too strong. It completely obliterated the entire ship,| the second one replied with a sigh.

Just as Miranda had intended, the Supremes assumed that whatever had interrupted the barrier’s full deployment had been the spaceship whose debris now floated in the vacuum.

Some of the debris had drifted outside the barrier’s region, so one of the Supremes used his power to pull all of it back inside, reasoning that if anything had escaped, an outsider might notice.

Placing a hand to his ear, he said, |It looks like someone tried to run, but the barrier caught them. Luckily, we deployed it at the right time. We’re heading back.|

With that, the two Supremes turned and zapped back to their original locations, unaware that a certain Hybrid was silently observing and noting the direction they’d taken.

Miranda observed which universe they had entered, then examined the roughly circular arrangement of the twelve universes before consulting her gathered information, confirming that the universe the Supremes had entered was the same one Ikerth had been heading toward.

Uetera.

After confirming this, Miranda turned and moved in the opposite direction until she reached the isolation barrier that now completely enveloped the cluster.

Due to the conservation of angular momentum, the universes in this region of the multiverse drifted through space in a roughly flat plane. The barrier itself formed a kind of spherical shell, extending across the entire gravitational field of the cluster.

She extended her hand and touched the barrier, attempting to push against it, but while she could stretch it like rubber, she couldn’t penetrate it with mere physical force.

For a moment, Miranda considered using her flames to test whether she could punch a hole through at full power, but recalling how quickly the two Supremes had reacted to her attempt at disrupting its deployment, she dismissed the idea.

It would only draw their attention back immediately, and this time, there was no way to use a decoy, like the spaceship, to mislead them.

Heaving a sigh, Miranda turned her gaze to the side, sweeping across the barrier as she thought.

’First, I have to find out the source of this barrier. Is it generated by a person, an artifact, or a machine?’

If a person created the barrier, their Authority would have to be at least on par with her Aspect Armament or even stronger. If it were a machine, she needed to identify its origin, its type, and, most importantly, whether it involved Xelvan technology.

The answers to these questions would dictate how she would operate within the barrier.

Miranda touched the Nexus Fascinator in her hair, directing a trace of cosmic energy into it to test whether it could aid her escape.

After a moment, she sighed, realising that the Authority Jamie had embedded in the Nexus Fascinator was not designed to bypass a high-level containment field like this. It was primarily meant for space travel, and although it possessed some offensive capabilities, those were not its main purpose.

Jamie had included the attack functions only as an afterthought.

Turning her attention back to her primary task, Miranda decided to locate the areas where the isolation field’s energy was most concentrated.

In barriers like this, the regions with the greatest energy density were likely the points of generation and the most heavily guarded.

She turned back toward the universe behind her, and as she drew closer, she noticed that beyond the immense, cloud-like formations of cosmic energy surrounding it, the universe was emitting cosmic energy in a light, upward pattern, like sprinklers dispersing water. This outward flow fed directly into the barrier.

’That wasn’t there before...’

Miranda shifted her gaze to the right and immediately activated the Nexus Fascinator, warping toward the next universe. Despite the vast distances, the Fascinator allowed her to easily traverse within the barrier, even if it could not extract her from it.

After hours of travel, she reached the second universe and observed cosmic energy being emitted both from what she discerned as its top and bottom in the same pattern.

’Could it be that this barrier is being generated through the combined cosmic energy output of all the cluster’s universes?’

If that was the case, something had to be forcing these universes to emit such energy, and that ’something’ was likely hidden within them.

’This...might take a while.’

Miranda sighed and decided to enter the second universe directly at the point where the barrier’s energy was being expelled, intending to locate whatever was driving the cosmic energy output.

However, the solution was not as simple as it initially seemed.

Although she had entered at the point where the cosmic energy was being released, she quickly realised that this was merely the outlet, not the source.

The energy was being faintly drawn from across the entire universe and concentrated at that spot.

Whatever entity or mechanism was gathering and focusing the energy was not physically present there, but located somewhere else within the vast expanse of the universe.

’Great, just great.’

Searching an entire universe for something she had no idea what it even looked like? That was an even bigger wild goose chase than tracking Eldros.

Granted, she had a tracker on Eldros, and its signal had a vast interstellar range, making that one doable.

This one? Not so much.

Miranda momentarily considered scanning the universe with cosmic energy to locate the source, but she knew such a scan would take an enormous amount of time. Moreover, any Supreme Realm existences present in the universe would likely detect such a high-level scan and immediately realise that another being of comparable power was operating within their domain.

’Plan B it is. The Main Entities of this universe and the members of its Pantheon.’

If she wasn’t mistaken, the universe she was in was Luabos, which was supposed to have mostly werewolves in its upper hierarchy.

Her first step would be to locate the Race Kings and Queens here and determine whether they were completely unaware of the Isolation Field or secretly collaborating with the Supreme Realm existences who had reacted to her earlier attempts to disrupt the isolation field, as well as with the Neo-Extinction Legion alongside Ikerth and his allies.

It was barely an hour after making this decision that Miranda encountered something noteworthy.

Due to her existence realm, higher dimensionality, and the immense power she had accumulated over millions of years, Miranda possessed a natural perception range spanning millions of light-years, even without actively using cosmic energy to scan her surroundings.

As she moved toward the central region of this universe, where all Zanerth colonies had been instructed to keep their seats of power to better influence surrounding regions, she began detecting rapid energy spikes several million light-years away.

She stopped, turning her gaze toward the source with curiosity, as the fluctuations didn’t appear natural, like those from a dying star or galaxy.

The spikes were random and erratic, resembling those released during combat, and from the scale of the energy reaching the edges of her perception range, she deduced that whoever was fighting couldn’t be below the Monarch Realm, since the power output far surpassed what a Monarch Realm could produce.