Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 415: Shores of Despair

The Mercury Galaxy.

A galaxy situated in the eastern region of the Zanerth Universe.

They weren’t like the Vela Galaxy, which dominated multiple regions, nor did they possess an exceptional planet like Estea, which had entire galaxies under its influence.

It was simply one among many ordinary galaxies in an unremarkable part of the universe.

At least, that was the case until they uncovered the gold mine that had always been hidden in their own backyard.

Among the prominent families within the Galaxy’s Aristocracy was the Cathedral Family. They were essentially Dukes, wielding authority and influence surpassed only by the Galactic Ruler.

In fact, the Galactic Ruler had attained that position through the considerable support of the Cathedral Family’s head.

The main members of the Cathedral Household were few in number, a result of the waning desire to produce heirs and expand their lineage brought about by their long lifespans.

The Head had only one wife, and together they had five children, three sons and a pair of twin daughters.

As they matured, all his children assumed various responsibilities in the Mercury Galaxy’s administration and politics, though his youngest chose not to follow that path.

She was more of a free spirit and wanted to explore, so she left Mercury and travelled through other galaxies across the universe once she reached the level of a ’Human Lord’.

Her journeys brought countless discoveries, enhancing not only her mastery of the arcane and mystic arts but also her raw power, and by the time she had advanced through the Race Ruler System to attain the level of a ’Witch Empress’, she chose to leave the universe entirely.

Millennia passed in that fashion, and the Cathedral Family naturally expanded, as the Duke’s children had children of their own, who later had grandchildren, and the generations continued to grow.

The youngest daughter of Duke Cathedral had long been regarded by the galaxy’s high society as ’missing, presumed dead’, though her immediate family—her parents and siblings—knew otherwise.

It wasn’t that they held out hope that she would one day return, but rather that they knew her whereabouts, for in the million years she had been gone, she had encountered extraordinary opportunities that caused her immense talent to flourish even further than it had back when she still resided in Zanerth.

She had reached a level of power far beyond the comprehension of those within the Mercury Galaxy, and through that power, along with the aid of the Drifter race, who specialised in cosmic information brokering and logistics, she sent recorded videos, messages, and various items to her family in Zanerth to let them know how she was doing.

This woman deeply loved her immediate family, though she didn’t hold the same affection for the descendants of her siblings, whom she had never met, so she preferred that only her parents and siblings were aware of her well-being and location.

As the years went on, she continued traversing the vast Cosmos, building a name for herself on the Cosmic Stage and steadily gaining greater power and influence.

By this time, millions of years had passed, and her parents, who by all logic should have long since reached the end of their lifespans, remained hale and strong thanks to the power of the ’Dimensional Rift’ that had been discovered and harnessed in the Mercury Galaxy during her absence.

They had mentioned this to her in one of their replies to her regular messages, assuring her that she needn’t worry about them growing old, and although she was intrigued by this power that allowed her parents and siblings to live far beyond what their Existence Realms should have permitted, she ultimately chose not to return just to inspect it herself.

Their reassurance was only a small part of why she didn’t return.

The greater reason was that around the time she had decided to head back to Zanerth, she became entangled in a Cosmic-level conflict between the Eternals who governed the Concepts and the beasts known as Cosmic Horrors.

She had simply been in the area when one of the most powerful Cosmic Horrors, the ’Crawling Chaos’, tore through the fabric of reality and attempted to ’crawl’ into the Cosmos to spread the influence of the Cosmic Force that had birthed it, and she joined the first responders who moved to banish the entity from existence, holding it off long enough for the nearest of the Eternals to arrive.

However, just when it seemed that the battle had ended, the Crawling Chaos, having taken notice of her after the damage she had inflicted upon it, extended one of its tentacles and seized her while her guard was lowered.

It dragged her into the void along with it, and through its direct connection to the Cosmic Force that had given it life, it alerted that Force not only to her presence but also to how perfectly suited she was as a vessel for its power.

She possessed an extraordinary level of compatibility with Chaotic Cosmic Power, and because of this, the Cosmic Force unilaterally decided that she would be its ’favourite’, forcefully granting her the greatest Authority it had ever bestowed upon any Envoy, intending to use her as a replacement for the Cosmic Horrors whose efforts to spread its influence across the Cosmos had been stopped by the Eternals.

This happened within the void layer beneath reality, and her existence, which had begun to unravel due to the nature of the void, mutated and transformed in ways no one could have foreseen.

When the Crawling Chaos finally threw her back into reality, she had become something beyond her own understanding.

The Cosmic Force attempted to corrupt her soul and turn her into a mindless embodiment of Chaos, but she endured, resisting its influence and preserving her sanity while desperately searching across the Cosmos for a means to rid herself of Chaos’ unwanted ’favour’.

She tried everything, from conducting experiments on Cosmic Horrors to willingly hurling herself into the Dark Multiverse, where the power of Order held absolute dominance, but nothing produced the result she sought.

In the process, she eventually reached the highest Existence Realm possible, and with it came an elevation of her Cosmic Authorities that allowed her to resist its influence more effectively, leading her to devise new methods to hold Chaos at bay. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

During this period, she hadn’t made contact with her family, and in time they grew increasingly worried, though they had no means of reaching her since she was no longer within any known universe.

While her father worried for her, his daughter fought against Chaos and succeeded in stripping away its title of ’Envoy’, only for it to return after some time.

No matter how often she purged herself of Chaos’ power, it always found its way back, and she came to understand that as long as Chaos lingered in every corner of the Cosmos where disorder existed, she could never completely free herself from its hold.

This realisation deeply affected her psyche, and coupled with the knowledge that there were no higher Existence Realms left to reach, leaving her only with the endless task of accumulating more cosmic energy and expanding her power without purpose, she gradually became disillusioned with reality.

She became nihilistic, believing there was no purpose in doing anything anymore since everything was meaningless in the end, and many times, she nearly willingly destroyed the mental barriers she had built to keep Chaos from turning her into its puppet.

During this period, she isolated herself on a random planet in a random universe she had wandered into aimlessly, spending her days idling within a forest on one of its continents.

After years of remaining motionless, staring into nothing and doing absolutely nothing, she eventually decided, whether out of whim or the faint remnants of emotion stirring within her, to take a walk.

While walking through the forest, she came across a group of humans wearing armour and speaking an unfamiliar language, who were terrified upon sensing the overwhelming power she emanated and attacked her out of fear.

She didn’t even glance their way, and none of their attacks reached her as every single one was nullified, and with a simple wave of her hand, she rendered them all unconscious and expelled them from the forest.

Not killing them, however, only led to more humans returning, this time in the form of an army that had, of their own accord, declared her ’Cursed’ because of the immeasurable power she possessed and her residence in a forest they considered dangerous.

She ignored everything they said and claimed, and just like before, she knocked them unconscious and cast them out.

The third time, however, they didn’t send an army but a single individual, a Hero of their world.

This Hero hadn’t come with the intention to fight or to slay her.

After reviewing the reports and examining the survivors of the army that had faced her, he had concluded that she wasn’t hostile, as she hadn’t taken a single life.

He approached without any intent to battle, carrying no weapon, and expressed his desire to speak with her while she sat beside a lake, staring blankly into the water.

She didn’t respond to him the first time he came, nor the second, third, fourth, or even the fifth.

Still, he continued to return again and again, finding her always in the same spot, talking to her one-sidedly, and after months of doing so, he finally received a response from her.

"...why?"

It was a simple question, and upon hearing it, the man was momentarily taken aback, clearly unprepared for her sudden interruption.

But when he noticed the faint spark of life that had appeared in her eyes beginning to fade again, he quickly spoke.

"You’ll have to be more specific about what you’re asking. Do you mean why I keep coming here? Why do you sit like this? Or...," he paused, glancing at her reflection in the water before finishing, "...why I bother doing anything at all?"

All he knew about her was that she, radiating immense power that terrified everyone around her—including him—had been sitting by the lake motionless for months, staring into the water with empty eyes, completely detached from everything around her.

Even so, his little observations gave him some idea of what might be troubling this mysterious woman.

"I don’t know the answer you ’want’, but what would it mean if you actually found one?"

"...?"

She tilted her head slightly, a faint trace of confusion passing over her face as though she couldn’t understand why he had asked such a thing, and seeing that, the man continued, picking up a stone and tossing it into the lake.

"I don’t know who you are, where you’re from, why you’re here, or what you’ve been through to have that look in your eyes that says ’nothing matters’.

What I do know is that you spared the lives of my men even though they foolishly attacked you, unaware that you possess power great enough to erase this world with a single thought, and in doing so, you’ve inadvertently protected my nation by driving away the monsters of this forest with nothing but your presence."