Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!

If this so-called invasion could be repelled, then the entire Sea of Death might very well fall under the dominion of this young man.

Boom…

Just when everyone thought they were safe, just as Ethan's heaven-defying powers had beaten back the Blood Clan, a tremor shuddered through the luminous pillar that anchored their army.

The Blood Clan's four-million-strong force had already suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, leaving their numbers looking thinned and ragged. Yet in the very next moment, an unending tide of fresh warriors surged out of the pillar once again.

These were nothing like the ones before. Each was grotesque and monstrous, their bodies towering four meters tall. Though vaguely human in form, they loomed like giants over the battlefield. Every one of them carried a massive double-bladed axe, the haft alone longer than a man, the blades stretching nearly ten meters across. The thickest part of each axe head measured a full five inches wide, gleaming with a dull, murderous light.

"What's going on?" Panic rippled through the crowd as faces turned from one to another in confusion.

"It looks like the portal has fully opened. Their reinforcements are here!" someone cried.

"What? That portal wasn't an escape route? They were summoning more of their kind?" The realization burst from another voice, sharp with fear.

"Are you serious? Who ever said they were running away? Use your head! You really thought they came all this way just to escape?" Several nearby scoffed at the foolish remark, their eyes full of scorn.

"Yaya," Ethan murmured within his Mindscape, speaking directly to his companion, "your destructive power is incredible, but the pace is too slow. We'll never keep up like this."

The enemy's numbers seemed endless. When would the slaughter stop? Worse still, the teleportation array had already been activated. Ethan could sense that more and more of these warped giants would continue to pour through. Unless they cleared out every last one of the current forces, there would be no way to breach the grand formation. And until the formation was destroyed, this crisis could not be ended. It was the very method the Blood King had warned him about before Ethan left the Central Dominion.

But the true danger hadn't even revealed itself yet. The ancient monster commanding the enemy had not stirred, and Ethan dared not throw his people recklessly into its path. If they engaged the enemy's top-tier combatants directly, then these countless Blood Clan warriors, left unchecked, would descend upon those behind him. They would butcher them all, perhaps even twist them into more of their own kind.

Nor could he allow his forces to retreat. Even if they pulled back now, it would accomplish nothing. The Blood Clan would only spread across the Sea of Death like a plague, picking them off one by one. In time, the entire sea would become their stronghold, and from there they would expand outward, until the Umbral Star itself was consumed. And once that happened, the Umbral Star would become a breeding ground for their kind—a launching point for an invasion of the Second Universe.

No, he could not allow that. For the sake of the Umbral Star, for the sake of the entire First Universe, there was only one choice left. The battle had to be contained here, in this frozen northern wasteland. The Blood Clan had to be stopped now.

"I'm sorry, brother," Yaya's voice trembled inside his mind. "Yaya doesn't know how to use skills!"

Hearing Yaya's reply, Ethan finally understood. At her core, she was a colossal tree, and what she was doing now was nothing more than feeding. The Blood Clan carried vast reserves of vital energy, and devouring them only accelerated her growth. Though she seemed unstoppable at the moment, mowing down enemies as if they were grass before the scythe, Ethan knew she would falter against a true powerhouse.

Still, the exact level of strength required to challenge her remained a mystery. What he did know was that several Saint-ranked Blood Clan members had already fallen helplessly to her, unable to withstand even a single lash of her branches. They had been skewered in midair and annihilated before they could mount the slightest resistance.

"Ethan, move! Get back, retreat!"

The urgent voice rang out in his Mindscape. Through Yaya's senses, Ethan saw a rift splitting open in the sky. From within it stepped Dragon Child, her face radiant with joy, smiling like a flower in bloom.

"Yaya, pull back…"

Ethan's breath caught. At some point, the spatial rift Dana had torn had shifted directly above him, almost certainly under Dragon Child's control. From within that crack in the sky came guttural roars, and even a colossal claw wrapped in living fire thrust outward, aimed directly at Dragon Child. She, however, only tilted her body, weaving around it as though playing hide-and-seek with a frustrated pet.

Ethan's scalp prickled. That claw didn't belong to a pet. What in the abyss was inside that rift? And why did Dragon Child look so pleased?

Yaya trembled. Her towering canopy shivered and shrank in an instant, collapsing into the form of a small sapling. She darted away in a blur, fleeing outside the grand formation Micah had built.

Ethan's eyes never left Dragon Child. She hovered in the sky for a heartbeat, then her body blurred and expanded, her figure stretching into the vast shape of a Blue Dragon. At last she revealed her true form.

"Haha! Let's see what runs out first—your reinforcements, or my Infernal Hound!"

Her voice thundered, her eyes alight with feverish excitement. She raised both claws and slashed at the rift. Then, with a sudden twist of her massive body, she hooked her talons into the edges of space itself and pulled.

Crackle. Crack. The sound was sharp and brittle, like parchment tearing. The void itself was ripped apart, shredded by Dragon Child's strength.

Roar.

The sound shook the sky as the beast inside finally came into view. Was this the Infernal Hound she had spoken of?

Ethan's jaw went slack, and the rest of the crowd stared in stunned silence.

Dragon Child tore the rift wider and wider, until it yawned open for more than a thousand meters. Out of the darkness thrust a claw so massive it made mountains seem small. And Ethan realized, with a lurch in his gut, that what he had glimpsed earlier through Dana's unstable rift wasn't its claw at all—it had only been one of its toes.

The tearing sounds kept coming as Dragon Child roared and ripped. Fortunately, besides water, she commanded the power of space itself. Without that, there would have been no hope of widening the passage with such precision, no way to drag something of this size into the open world.

The creature's leg slammed down onto the frozen earth. Boom. The ground convulsed under the impact, and the ice cracked and began to melt. The air itself grew hotter, and Ethan felt a wave of suffocating heat roll over him. That pillar of a leg burned with searing flames, etched with intricate molten patterns through which liquid fire pulsed like blood.

"A twelfth-tier beast of the Demon Realm… an Infernal Hound? You've lost your mind. You're playing with fire!"

The furious voice came from within the Blood Clan's grand formation, strained with disbelief and barely contained fury.

Dragon Child only laughed, her voice bright and mocking. "Old man, don't worry about whether we're playing with fire. Why don't you worry about surviving instead? Garm, bite him!"

She dropped back to the ground beside Ethan, planting her hands on her hips like a mischievous child pointing out a spectacle.

Ethan stared at her, utterly speechless. He wanted to laugh, to cry, to shout—anything. That beast—Garm, the Infernal Hound—wasn't even fully through the rift yet. It thrashed and ripped at the torn edges of space itself, its vast body still wedged in the void.

Crackle. Crackle. Crackle. The air shook with the sound of reality itself straining under its weight.

And Ethan could only think: what kind of madness had Dragon Child unleashed upon them all?