Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat - Chapter 793

Capítulo 793: The Price of a Name

The figure he had slammed against the wall was none other than the girl herself, Mirage.

She struggled wildly, fingers clawing at his wrist as her heels scraped uselessly against the floor. Her face was already flushing, her eyes starting to roll back as the pressure on her throat stole her breath.

“I didn’t…” she forced out, the words barely audible before his grip tightened further, crushing the air from her lungs.

“Don’t lie,” Ethan snarled, his voice low and vicious. “You think I can’t feel it? You’re still trying to use it on me.”

His Soul Sense flared, clearly detecting the subtle, invasive waves of allure radiating from her body even now. The sensation crawled along his awareness like a slow poison, insidious and persistent. His fingers closed harder, muscles locking as he prepared to end it.

Ethan had never believed in mercy for the fairer sex. Enemy was enemy. Man, woman, child, if they posed a threat, they were dealt with. That was a brutal truth he had accepted long ago, and one he carried even more firmly into this second life.

Just as his strength reached its crushing peak, the girl’s body suddenly shimmered.

A puff of white smoke burst outward, and in the space of a heartbeat, the beautiful young woman vanished. In her place was a small, slender fox, its pale fur gleaming faintly under the lights. The creature still dangled from his hand, its body limp and utterly unconscious.

Ethan blinked.

‘Not human? A magical beast?’

The realization hit him at the same time another detail clicked into place. Even with her mind gone dark, that strange, beguiling psychic aura still lingered, faint but unmistakable. It had not faded with her consciousness.

Had he been wrong?

He loosened his grip slightly and focused, filtering the sensation through his senses with care. No. The aura was definitely hers. It simply was not something she actively controlled. It was innate, woven into her existence like a natural scent or presence.

She really was trying to say “I didn’t…”

A brief flicker of embarrassment passed through him. He exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his free hand, irritation and self-awareness mixing uncomfortably. So she had genuinely just wanted an autograph. A fan. A fox-girl fangirl, of all things.

The thought vanished as quickly as it came.

This creature had slit Blackie’s throat, injured Amber, and kidnapped Rainie. Whatever her intentions had been at the start no longer mattered. Sentiment was a luxury he could not afford.

If he did not need information about who had hired her, he would have snapped her neck without hesitation, fox or not.

With a casual flick of his wrist, a shimmering portal opened in the air beside him, roughly a foot wide. It led into his Mindscape, now expanded and capable of sustaining life thanks to the Four City Lord Seals. He tossed the unconscious fox inside as if discarding a sack of grain, then sealed the portal shut.

Blackfin, Shadowstrike, and the squad of mercenaries crowding the doorway had witnessed the entire exchange in stunned silence. Their automatic rifles were still trained forward, fingers tense on triggers.

When they had arrived, Blackfin had signaled them to hold their fire. That single moment of restraint had likely saved all of their lives. Had even one of them opened up, this compound would already be a slaughterhouse.

Blackfin said nothing.

Shadowstrike’s expression was dark, his jaw tight, eyes stormy as he stared at the spot where Mirage had vanished.

Ethan ignored them both and turned back to Rainie.

With the path clear, he raised the Ashaman’s Fang claws and brought them down. The polar ice-silk cocoon was designed to restrain even enhanced targets, but against this weapon it might as well have been paper. The material split open with a sharp tearing sound.

Inside, Rainie had been trapped in total sensory deprivation, no sight, no sound, no sense of time. The instant the cocoon opened, she reacted on instinct alone.

A jet-assisted kick exploded toward the opening, fast and precise.

“It’s me!” Ethan said, already sidestepping as he spoke.

Rainie froze mid-motion. Her mech’s thrusters cut out instantly as recognition set in. She dropped lightly to the floor, boots landing with controlled grace as her armored helmet turned toward him.

“Ethan…” Her voice cracked, the single word breaking into a sob she could not hold back.

This was the second time she had been kidnapped. The first time, she had been completely helpless, saved only by his impossible arrival. This time, even inside her mech, the fear had been just as overwhelming. Beneath the armor and weapons, she was still a civilian at heart.

When Ethan had descended from Shatterstar and then stopped responding to her calls, the silence had pressed in on her like a suffocating weight. Every second without an answer had fed the terror.

Seeing him now, alive and standing in front of her, shattered the dam completely, and all of that fear came rushing out at once.

Even so, Rainie stayed sharp, keeping her mech fully sealed. Her sensors swept the room, locking onto the armed men clustered near the doorway, and without thinking she shifted her position, placing herself squarely between them and Ethan.

Ethan noticed, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

She was trying to protect him.

“Relax,” he said quietly. “They can’t touch us.”

It was not bravado. At this point, aside from his inability to fly, Ethan’s combat strength ranked just below Uncle Jed and Regis. The Blackfins were infamous in the ordinary world, feared by civilians and law enforcement alike, but that reputation meant nothing here. When their guns were reduced to little more than noisy toys, they were helpless.

Ethan himself still had not fully adjusted to the changes brought on by surviving the Annihilation Tribulation. Regular firearms barely registered as a threat anymore. Even earlier, when Blackfin had fired at him, Iron Hide had not truly been necessary.

“Shadowstrike,” Ethan said, his tone casual as he turned his gaze toward the man. “It’s time to settle our account.”

Shadowstrike’s face flushed a deep, unhealthy purple. His lips parted, then pressed together before he finally spoke. “Ethereal is just a game…”

The words came out strained, desperate. He had seen what happened to Mirage. The speed alone defied comprehension. This so called Druid God was undeniably part of the Supernatural World. Shadowstrike had always been a big fish among mercenaries, feared and respected, but standing here now, he felt painfully small.

Plankton.

He was trying to pull back, to de escalate, to argue that rivalries born in a virtual world should never spill into reality.

Blackfin cut him off with a raised hand.

“If he dies,” Blackfin said calmly, eyes fixed on Ethan, “do my men and I walk away?”

The question settled heavily in the air.

Shadowstrike’s eyes widened in pure panic.

“Blackfin, what are you doing?” he hissed, his hand tightening around the knife at his side. He stood right beside his leader, close enough to feel the shift in intent. The message was unmistakable.

He was being offered up.

‘Fine,’ Shadowstrike thought, a cold fury crystallizing in his chest. ‘If you’re throwing me to the wolves, then we go down together.’

In tight quarters like this, he considered himself Blackfin’s equal.

His movement was sudden and precise, the result of years of killing. The knife flashed upward, angled perfectly toward Blackfin’s heart, fast enough that even the mercenaries barely registered it.

A calm voice sliced through the tension.

“I only want him dead,” Ethan said evenly. “I never said I was here for you.”

The words landed like a verdict.

Clang!

The sharp ring of metal echoed through the room as Shadowstrike’s blade struck Blackfin’s chest and failed completely. Instead of flesh, it met something hard and layered. Beneath the torn fabric, overlapping scale-like plates glinted faintly.

“You… you’re not normal either!” Shadowstrike gasped, his face draining of all color.

Blackfin did not reply.

His gold plated pistol was already raised, the barrel pressed flat against Shadowstrike’s forehead.

“Eighteen hundred lives,” Blackfin said coldly, “or yours. The math is simple.”

BANG.

And just like that, in the life Ethan had reclaimed, the player known as Shadowstrike met his end.

Ethan watched the body collapse to the floor, the echo of the gunshot still hanging in the air, and felt a strange hollowness settle quietly in his chest.