Bloodline Evolution: I Can Choose Opposing Paths-Chapter 40: The Fate of Sun City

Aren’s heel dug into cracked asphalt as the air in front of him warped. His back foot slid half an inch before he forced it down harder.

It was like a tidal current was trying to drag him along with it.

The woman lifted her hand.

Chains erupted outward in all directions, not even aiming straight at him, but just at his general location.

Concrete barriers exploded as guardrails twisted free and fell to the street below. An abandoned sedan was crushed flat as a chain went straight through its body, throwing it aside.

She doesn’t seem to have full control of it. It’s too dangerous.

He caught Luna’s wrist immediately, pulling her away from the attack zone. They zig-zagged in between cars as iron spears erupted from behind them. One went right past his right shoulder with another just barely missing Luna’s leg.

A chain came from above. Aren quickly pushed Luna to the right as he dove toward the left. The chain landed right between them, spraying concrete shards everywhere.

Another one came right toward Luna. Aren stepped in instinctively, water compressed around his forearm as he deflected it just enough for the iron to glance off.

The impact jarred his entire arm to the shoulder. He couldn’t take many more of those.

"Are you good?!" Aren yelled as they continued running.

"Yeah!" Luna answered through the chaos, ducking under flying debris. "I can fight her, Aren! Let me help!"

"No!" he snapped immediately. "She’s around Veteran-Grade!"

"Even with the Core inside me, I couldn’t fully block her attack!"

"Then what should we do?!" Luna called as another chain tore through a wrecked truck behind them.

"You get out of here," Aren said, breath sharp but steady. "The military should be coming. Guide them here!"

Luna hesitated.

Another chain tore through the overturned truck behind them, metal folding inward like paper. The shockwave nearly knocked them off balance.

"Aren—"

"Go!" he barked, sharper this time.

She clenched her jaw.

"Don’t die," she said before running off.

The moment Luna cleared the immediate kill radius, he turned around. Something inside him shifted, a sudden wave of calm rushed over him.

He had fought worse than this. He had stood at the peak once.

This wasn’t impossible.

Just difficult.

Come on Aren...You’ve fought worse than this.

With that thought, his hands opened. The twin swords answered instantly, forming in his grasp as though they had never left.

Across the fractured highway, the woman tilted her head slightly as they made eye contact.

"Finally done running, little lizard?"

"Was warming up."

With that final declaration, Aren sprinted toward her.

A chain screamed toward his face and he dipped under it without slowing, blade angled upward just enough to change its trajectory. Sparks flew through the air as steel collided against each other.

He continued running.

Three iron spears converged from the opposite lane, snapping together into a triangle meant to cage him. He stopped and pivoted sharply, water condensing as he sliced through them just enough to slip through the gap.

A part of it still slammed into his shoulder as he rolled through, but Aren gritted his teeth and continued anyway.

A wrecked SUV launched from the highway and flew toward him like a missile. Aren ducked as low as he could, condensing water at his feet to lower friction enough so he could slide right under it. The car flew right overhead before exploding right behind him.

The distance between them closed faster than she’d expected. Aren twisted aside her quick attempt to shrug him off, but it was too late.

His left blade carved right across her flank.

Blood sprayed all across the cracked highway. She leaned down, clutching at the wound before looking at her hands.

"Lo—look Seraph!" she laughed softly. "It’s...it’s my blood!"

Aren backed off, sensing something wrong. Her personality had changed too much since the start. It’s as if she’d...become an entirely different person.

Her gaze snapped up, pupils completely white as a thin, unnatural smile stretched across her face.

"He hurt me, Seraph."

The chains behind her convulsed violently before—

SNAP!

The iron links that had orbited her like restraints fractured one after another. For a split second, the world seemed to hold its breath.

Then something rose, the silhouette behind her, the caged Seraph straightened.

Aren had seen Manifestations before. This was different. He’d never seen a Mystic speak directly to their Bloodline before. Yet here she was, a Mystic so synchronized with their Bloodline that the manifestation felt...alive.

The iron figure behind her was no longer crouched or bound in layered chains. It stood upright now, its form no longer incorporeal.

Aren braced himself, crossing both swords in a defensive stance.

This is bad—!

The Seraph flexed its hand once. Instantly, dozens of chains erupted in a wave, becoming a storm of iron.

Aren managed to deflect the first two strikes, but the third smashed straight through his guard and sent him skidding backward. He rolled just in time to avoid another that made a huge crater where he was a second ago.

With each second, a new attack came. Aren pivoted, ducked, twisted, but it wasn’t enough.

There were simply too many.

One chain grazed his thigh as another tore across his back. A third slammed into his side and knocked the breath from his lungs. He crossed his blades again to block a descending spear, the impact drove him down to one knee.

Aren barely managed to roll clear before the highway behind him collapsed under the barrage.

He came up breathing heavily, his body was filled with a dozen different wounds as he bled everywhere. His water ether struggled to keep up.

Her laughter rang across the broken highway.

"You thought..." she giggled, white pupils locked onto him. "You thought you could touch us?"

She raised up her hand to make a circle.

"Guess what!" she yelled in excitement. "Even with the Core! Even if you multiply yourself a thousand times..."

Her grin stretched wider.

"You’re still zero. Still nothing!"

Aren plunged a sword into the ground as he tried to push himself back up. He barely made it halfway as a chain shot through the air and struck him right in the chest.

He crashed into the nearby car, coughing up blood.

Blood streamed down her side, but she didn’t seem to feel it.

"You see it now?" she laughed, chains hammering the highway around him. "You finally get it?"

A spear of iron tore through the space between them and struck him in the side, ripping away flesh as it punched through. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"GARGHHH—!" Aren grunted in pain.

"This world is rot!" she shrieked. "It devours the weak!"

"You’re either strong enough to protect what you love—"

Her voice cracked.

"Or you lose it..."

The chains retracted as she stared him dead in the eyes. Her breathing was hitched and unstable.

"Now give me that Core!" she screamed suddenly, all composure gone. "Give it to me!"

The Seraph leaned forward as if listening.

"So I can get my love back!"

Aren forced himself upright by sliding up the car. His water ether flickered weakly, struggling to seal the flesh wound.

Now that he was closer, the details were evident. It wasn’t the wings that unsettled him or the halo.

It was the face.

The Seraph’s features were not blank or indistinct like a common manifestation. They were defined, subtly shaped and eerily human.

The shape of the jaw, slope of the nose—it resembled the robed woman. No...like a younger version of her.

Was this really...?

Aren had heard rumors before. Of bloodlines evolving or mutating under stress. But this...this felt shaped by grief, by an obsession so deep that the Bloodline itself bent toward it.

A chain lashed past his shoulder, grazing him again, but he barely reacted. His gaze remained fixed on the towering figure behind her.

Aren exhaled slowly, ignoring the sting in his lungs as he stood upright once more.

"You’re right," he said quietly. "There is rot."

For a heartbeat, her manic expression brightened.

"So you agree!" she cried, chains jerking upward in anticipation. "You finally get it!"

She took a stumbling step forward, white pupils wide and unblinking.

"Then please," she gasped, voice cracking. "Rip that Core out of your heart."

"PLEASE!"

Aren looked at her before tightening his grip on his blades.

"There is rot," he repeated quietly. "But becoming it won’t save what you lost."

He took a step forward instead of back.

"So that’s why," Aren said, voice calm despite the blood running down his side.

"I’ll become strong enough to uproot it all."

The chains rose instantly, all of them at once. Her expression twisted, something between rage and disbelief flashing across her face.

"You—!"

But by the time she reacted, he’d already moved.

It wasn’t a burst of power, just a single perfectly timed step that cut through it all.

The first chain skimmed past his shoulder. The second grazed his ribs. The third he ignored entirely as it tore flesh, because by then he was already close enough.

Her eyes widened.

She tried to react, lifting her hand up as the Seraph mirrored it.

He drove forward with everything he had left, water condensing along his blade as he thrust straight through her chest.

For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then it all collapsed.

Blood burst violently from her eyes, from her nose, from her mouth as if something inside her had ruptured under the strain. The chains that had been in the sky froze before returning back toward the Seraph itself. It constricted around the Spirit, binding it once more.

She trembled against his blade, the white draining from her pupils as clarity returned in a single, fragile moment.

Her breathing faltered, fingers twitching weakly against his arm.

"...Ah..."

The hysteria was gone, replaced only by exhaustion.

"...Now..."

Her lips curved faintly, almost peacefully.

"...I can finally be with her..."

The last of the iron light shattered behind her, dissolving into drifting motes that scattered in the wind...before she went limp.

Aren withdrew his blade.

For a second, he remained standing. Then the strength left his legs.

The world tilted violently as he crashed onto his back, vision blurring at the edges. Every wound flared in pain now that the adrenaline was gone.

He’d somehow absorbed the Fertile Core and survived. He’d fought a Veteran-Stage Defiler, and won.

The sky above him blurred in and out of focus. But with it came a sound.

Helicopters.

The thrum grew louder, blades chopping through the sky as soldiers comm’d on the situation.

"Defiler neutralized."

"Core target confirmed...Wait, it’s...inside?"

Aren tried to lift his head, though it felt impossibly heavy.

Through the haze of sweeping lights and drifting dust, he saw a figure approach. An unfamiliar silhouette, yet with the familiar military emblem he’d seen before.

The man stopped a few feet from him. For a moment, there was only the sound of the helicopters and the faint ache in his head.

"So this is him?"

Aren’s eyes blurred, the unconscious taking over.

"Well... I’ll be damned."