Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat - Chapter 687

Chapter 687: Taunting the Heavens

Ethan fought on, but a sliver of cold dread was creeping into his heart. These Thunder Whales weren’t mindless energy constructs; they fought with a terrifying, growing intelligence. The more he battled them, the more they adapted to his movements and habits.

Worse, they were learning to coordinate. Their defenses became a layered, unbroken wall. Their attacks crashed against him in relentless, overlapping waves, one strike setting up the next. It was absurd. When all nine had been present, he’d handled them with relative ease. Now, with only seven left, he found himself hard-pressed to land a clean hit.

BOOM!

As he twisted in mid-air, narrowly avoiding a crushing tail-sweep from one whale, another slammed into him head-on. The impact sent him flying backward like a ragdoll. And on his trajectory, two more massive tails swung toward him, poised to smash him between them.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” he snarled.

“Bear Form! Activate! Iron Hide! Iron Hide! Frenzied Regeneration!”

He roared the commands. The phantom panther overlaying his form vanished, replaced instantly by the hulking, spectral image of a giant bear. An ancient, primal power flooded his veins, and he felt his strength multiply exponentially.

He layered two Iron Hide defenses over his skin and triggered a Frenzied Regeneration. The searing pain from his previous wound vanished as flesh knitted itself back together in an instant.

THUMP! THUMP!

The moment Bear Form solidified, his flying body jerked to a sudden, impossible halt in the air. The two whale tails meant to pulverize him swished through empty space.

Instead of retreating, Ethan shoved the Twilight Warspear forward and charged.

“Pathfinder’s Guidance! Bear Charge!”

He became a battering ram of pure force, reversing his momentum and hurling himself directly at the nearest Thunder Whale. His Iron Hide was active; he had a limited window of near-invulnerability, and he wasn’t about to waste it.

KABOOM!

The collision made the firmament shudder. The tip of the Twilight Warspear met the whale’s charge head-on, piercing deep into its energy-formed body. Ethan’s momentum was so immense that he didn’t stop; he tore through the creature, emerging from its other side in a shower of crackling energy.

POP.

Unsurprisingly, the whale dissolved into another swirling cloud of runes. And, just as unsurprisingly, Ethan didn’t hesitate to sweep them all into the devouring vortex in his palm.

Feeling the dual forms thrumming within him—the bear’s raw power and the panther’s fluid speed—was intoxicating. He weaved through the remaining whales, the Twilight Warspear moving in great, sweeping arcs. He channeled Bear Form skills and Panther Form skills simultaneously, the dual-layered force making his attacks both devastatingly powerful and brutally efficient.

“Overwhelming force really does conquer all skill,” he grunted in satisfaction.

With both forms active, the whales were no longer a threat. They were prey. One by one, he shattered them. Cloud after cloud of glowing Thunder runes were forcibly absorbed, pulled into the depths of his being.

He was unaware that within his Energy Core, a storm was brewing. The runes had gathered into a dense, spinning mass. The arrogant Dragon of Consumption, which usually lounged within his core, had retreated to the farthest, darkest corner, watching the churning ball of lightning at the center with sheer terror. The runes pulsed with immense power, each one feeling like a primed explosive waiting to detonate.

CRACK!

The last Thunder Whale exploded under the force of his spear. Another flood of runes poured into his core.

ROOOOAR!

The world shook again, this time so violently that Ethan stumbled in the air. He snapped his gaze upward.

The thunderclouds above were churning with renewed, furious intensity, gathering for what came next.

“Goddammit! Are you fucking serious?” Ethan bellowed, shaking the Twilight Warspear at the heavens. “Just get on with it! Stop dragging this out! I don’t have all day to play your little games!”

His voice, amplified by the energy coursing through him, cut through the thunder itself, reaching the ears of his companions far in the distance.

“I’m going to strangle that kid myself!” Uncle Jed spluttered, his face turning a shade of purple. “Does he think this is a fucking sparring match? He’s taunting the heavens!”

“Did your leader… suffer a head injury as a child?” Dragon Child asked, turning to Victor and the others with a look of pure disbelief.

“He’s so cool…” Lyla murmured from within her mech’s cockpit, utterly ignoring the older generation’s panic.

She wasn’t alone. Leo, Williams, Blackie, Micah… all the younger members of their group wore expressions of awestruck admiration.

“The boss is on another level,” Leo declared with a grin. “If I were a woman, I’d be trying to climb that man like a tree.”

“He’s definitely badass, and it’s definitely cool,” Micah said, the voice of reason cutting through the hero worship. “But cool or not, he’s about to be in deep shit. Look.”

The others focused, some using their abilities, others zooming in with their mech’s optical systems.

“Holy hell…” Blackie breathed.

They watched as Ethan’s body was suddenly slammed downward from the sky. The moment his provocation had ended, the thunderclouds had boiled over in apparent rage. They churned and expanded, their darkness growing deeper, more menacing. Regis and the others had been forced to retreat even further.

But Ethan, it seemed, was not done. A wild grin split his face.

“Owl Form! Activate!”

A third phantom joined the bear and panther behind him, a majestic, glowing owl. Three spectral forms now stood side-by-side, their power converging on him.

“Energy Fusion Technique… Force Resonance!”

The space around Ethan warped, swirling with raw, condensed energy.

“Compress… Sunburn… Shred… Crush…!”

By activating three forms at once, he could channel the power of three different skills simultaneously. He forced all that chaotic, immense power directly into the shaft of the Twilight Warspear.

“BREAK!”

He gripped the spear with both hands, swinging it not like a precision weapon, but like a colossal blade. A crescent of pure energy, kilometers long, erupted from it, screaming upward from the ground toward the heart of the storm.

SHIIING!

The light-blade tore across the sky as if ripping through fabric. The tribulation clouds were sheared in two by the attack. A single, narrow gap—a one-line sky—opened, and a beam of actual sunlight pierced through the darkness.

The clouds roiled in fury, slamming back together to seal the wound.

BOOM! BOOM!

The thunder that followed was pure, undiluted rage. Provoked beyond measure, the cloud mass began to thicken and churn with insane violence, billowing upward and downward. From a distance, its shape morphed from a flat ceiling into a towering, monstrous mushroom cloud.

Something immense and terrible was being born within those depths.

“Again! OPEN!” Ethan yelled.

He gathered the power of ten separate skills, forging a second light-blade. This one was a staggering twenty kilometers long. He swung.

CRACK!

The tribulation clouds were split apart once more, the forming cataclysm inside them disrupted again.

“ROOOOOAAAAAR!”

This time, a bestial, earth-shaking roar erupted from within the clouds. The fissures sealed instantly. And then, a pressure descended. It was an aura of absolute, heavenly suppression.

Ethan, who had been floating defiantly in the air, was instantly hammered down to the ground.

BOOOM!

The moment his feet touched the earth, the ground for a full kilometer around him cratered, sinking dozens of meters into a perfect, massive circle.

The smirk was finally wiped from Ethan’s face. This… this pressure was on a completely different level.