Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat - Chapter 791

Capítulo 791: Dropping In Without Permission

The fact that he only had his left eye was the only thing that saved him.

The woman was seated in the right passenger seat, and from his position, he had not seen her provocative display at all. He only realized something had happened when her voice drifted over, lazy and deliberate. A cold sweat instantly broke out across his forehead.

‘If she had taken my left eye last time… my right eye would have glanced over instinctively just now.’

He stared straight ahead, his posture rigid, not daring to even flick his gaze toward the rearview mirror. The last thing he needed was for that terrifying creature to think he was looking at her.

The convoy continued deeper into the jungle, the dense green swallowing the road behind them. Three hours passed in silence, broken only by the hum of engines. Their destination was still far away. Micah and Blackie eventually went to rest, slipping into their pods, but Victor remained standing at Ethan’s side, watching the feed with growing focus.

“Ethan, zoom in on the map,” Victor said suddenly, his eyes sharpening.

“Hm? You see it too?” Ethan replied, lifting a hand. The holographic display expanded at once.

“Look at the heading… that red marker… is that…?” Victor’s voice tightened as he leaned closer.

“It’s Shadowstrike,” Ethan finished calmly.

With Shatterstar under his control, locating anyone on Earth was trivial, unless they lived completely off the grid and avoided all networks and modern technology.

“The Blackfins?” Victor asked, the realization clicking into place.

“Looks like it,” Ethan said. “See the tattoos?”

He pointed at the feed. Each mercenary driving the Humvees had the same black shark tattoo etched onto their wrist, unmistakable and deliberate, the calling card of the Blackfin mercenary group.

“That woman… she’s not one of them,” Victor said after a moment.

“Right. She’s the client,” Ethan replied.

Victor frowned slightly. “So if that’s the case…”

The rest of the thought did not need to be spoken. Following the convoy to a Blackfin base might not reveal who was actually backing that woman.

“Let’s see it through,” Ethan said after a brief pause.

He had already considered the possibility, but after tailing them for this long, another hour or two meant nothing. If anything, he was more irritated by how painfully slow the Humvees were moving.

Another hour passed before a fortified compound finally came into view.

It was not particularly large, but its defenses were anything but modest. Twelve guard towers ringed the perimeter, giving full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree coverage. Shatterstar’s scans revealed a minefield stretching two kilometers in every direction around the compound. There was only one road leading inside, the same one the Humvees were traveling, and along it stood heavy-weapon checkpoints every five hundred meters.

This kind of security could easily grind down and annihilate multiple special forces teams. Only a full-scale military assault could breach it, and even then, success was not guaranteed. But this was the badlands. Deploying that kind of force here would spark international incidents, possibly even open conflict.

This place was a true den of outlaws.

“They’re going in,” Victor said quietly. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll go in and play,” Ethan replied. “You all provide cover.”

As the mech slowed to a halt, Blackie and Micah emerged from their rest pods and moved over, their expressions alert.

“Ethan…” Micah began, concern clear in his voice.

“Relax,” Ethan said with a small smile. “I’ve got this. With Shatterstar backing me up, nothing here can touch me.”

As he spoke, his personal combat armor flowed out from its storage nodules, spreading across his body like liquid metal. In seconds, it sealed around him completely.

A moment later, he launched himself from the main craft’s airlock.

He descended under cloak, completely invisible to the naked eye. When he was dozens of meters above the compound’s center, he did something no one expected.

He disengaged the armor.

It retracted instantly, folding back into itself, leaving him in ordinary clothes as he continued to fall freely through open air.

His sudden, uncloaked appearance directly overhead made every guard in the watchtowers freeze.

For a split second, no one could comprehend what they were seeing. A man had simply appeared in the sky above their base. The quicker thinkers snapped out of it and instinctively looked higher, searching for a parachute, assuming he had jumped from a plane. But the seconds kept ticking by, and nothing deployed.

No sane paratrooper would wait this long.

This was not an insertion.

It was suicide.

In that brief moment of shared confusion, Ethan hit the ground.

BOOM!

It was not the wet, bone-splattering splat the mercenaries were bracing for. Instead, it was the thunderous impact of something impossibly dense slamming into packed earth. The ground shook. A massive cloud of dust erupted, swallowing the center of the compound.

“Did… did I just see a man?” one guard stammered, gripping the railing as all twelve towers locked onto the dust cloud. “Or was that a metal statue?”

“I think it was a person…” his partner muttered, sounding just as unsure.

“That guy… ah—!”

The sentence cut off in a scream as the wooden platform beneath them lurched violently. A sharp crack echoed out, and the tower collapsed inward. The guard vanished as the structure gave way, his body following it down in a tangle of splintered wood.

“CONTACT! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”

Sirens howled to life. Floodlights snapped on. Men poured out of the barracks in waves, rifles raised, fingers tight on triggers, shouting over one another as they fanned out across the compound.

At the center of it all, the door to the largest building swung open.

A broad-shouldered man with a thick beard stepped onto the porch, a gold-plated handgun resting easily in his grip. The girl from the Humvee followed just behind him, along with a man Ethan immediately recognized.

Shadowstrike.

“Where is he?” “Find him!” “Spread out!”

Orders overlapped as panic rippled through the Blackfins. They searched frantically, weapons sweeping the compound, but there was nothing to lock onto. No movement. No target.

The bearded man, known to his people as Blackfin, stood still on the elevated porch, his sharp gaze cutting through the chaos. From where he stood, he could see nearly everything. The dust was already settling. His men were in position, tense and ready.

There was no intruder in sight.

The only unfamiliar presence was the girl beside him.

Blackfin glanced at her, his grip tightening slightly on the pistol. He knew what she was capable of. If she had wanted him dead, he would not be standing here. Was it her? The thought crossed his mind, but her expression told a different story.

She looked curious.

Just as caught off guard as he was.

Then her expression changed.

Her curiosity vanished in an instant, replaced by sharp focus. Her eyes snapped toward the open doorway behind them.

In the next heartbeat, she was gone.

Her body blurred as she moved, vanishing back into the building faster than most eyes could track.

Shadowstrike saw it at the same time.

A knife slid into his hand from the sheath strapped to his leg, the motion smooth and practiced. Without hesitation, he sprinted after her, disappearing through the doorway.

Blackfin understood immediately.

This was about the cocoon-like object the girl had brought with her.

The intruder had come for it.

He racked the slide of his golden pistol, chambering a round with a sharp metallic click, and turned back toward the building.

Then he followed Shadowstrike inside.