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

Chapter 947: The Fourth Shard

Ethan’s eyes widened the moment he saw what Vasuki was holding, the recognition hitting him so hard it almost felt physical."Divine Shards?"

There was no doubt about it. They were identical to the fragment he had sealed away earlier, not just similar in shape or aura, but unmistakably the same kind. And not just one. All three of the remaining pieces.

Vasuki tilted his head slightly, a faint grin forming on his childish face. "Oh, you know what these are? So you’ve seen one before?"

Before Ethan could respond properly, Vasuki reached out and grabbed his arm with surprising force for someone who looked so small.

"Where did you get these?" Ethan demanded immediately, his tone sharp.

"From the other three places," Vasuki replied casually, as if he were talking about picking fruit from a tree. "There were only four spots in this whole world I couldn’t sense, like little black holes in my perception. So I visited each one and picked up a souvenir."

He said it so lightly that it almost didn’t register.

Ethan stared at him, stunned. "You... smashed the other three Divine Sea Temples?"

His gaze flicked instinctively toward the hole in the sky above them, the unnatural tear still crackling with residual energy.

"No, no, no, I didn’t smash them," Vasuki said, waving his hand dismissively. "Those things are too hard."

He wasn’t lying. Ethan could tell.

"But—"

Before Vasuki could finish, another bolt of lightning tore through the hole in the sky. It descended with terrifying speed. The little monk instantly ducked behind Ethan, using him as cover without the slightest hesitation. The lightning, unable to change direction in time, struck Ethan directly.

Ethan barely reacted. Instead, he nodded slightly, as if something had just clicked into place. "So that’s what did it. The lightning pierced the temples."

Vasuki peeked out from behind him, clearly unbothered. "All I have to do is hold onto my obsession with taking you as my disciple, and the Annihilating Lightning triggers on its own." He chuckled, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Heh... Say, kid... what are you, exactly?"

Another thunderous crack split the air before Ethan could answer. A second bolt came down, and once again Vasuki used him as a shield, stepping behind him with practiced ease.

"What’s the matter?" Vasuki circled him slowly now, looking him up and down with open curiosity. "Can’t even answer a simple question?"

He didn’t press further, though. Instead, he extended his hand expectantly. "Give me the last shard."

Ethan hesitated for a brief moment before reaching into his storage and pulling out the Divine Shard he had sealed using his Soul Energy. The system had labeled it as one quarter of something larger, though it hadn’t triggered any kind of quest, and Ethan had long since stopped trusting it completely. The shard itself radiated something deeply unsettling. The faint pull it exerted on the mind, the contaminant energy woven into it, it all left a bad taste in his mouth.

Still, Vasuki already had the other three. With this one, they would form a complete piece. On top of that, the destruction of the other temples, however it had happened, had removed a massive threat from the board. The outside world was probably in chaos now. Ethan could only imagine how the people tied to the Divine Sea Temples were reacting to the loss of their strongholds.

Even so, he couldn’t help but warn him. "This isn’t a good thing. Be careful."

Vasuki waved him off impatiently and snatched the shard from his hand. "Yeah, yeah. Just some dead fool’s leftover will. What’s a corpse going to do?"

He crushed Ethan’s Soul Energy seal as easily as breaking glass. The shard dropped into his palm, and at the same time, the other three fragments rose into the air, as if drawn by an invisible force. The fourth piece joined them.

Soft, precise clicks echoed in the air as the fragments aligned and fused together.

A dark purple-black light burst forth from the completed Divine Shard, pulsing with an ominous presence that made it immediately clear this was not something benevolent.

The entire Divine Sea Temple trembled in response.

A figure slowly formed above the shard, its lower half fading into translucence like mist, resembling a genie emerging from a vessel. It looked down at Vasuki with an air of authority.

"You awakened me?"

"Yes," Vasuki replied simply, his tone flat. "You have three seconds to say your last words."

The contrast between his childish appearance and the absolute confidence in his voice was jarring.

"What? You have obtained my Divine Shard. You shall inherit my divine seat—"

"Time’s up. Buddha Light... Purify."

The figure barely managed half a sentence before Vasuki cut him off. A radiant nine-colored halo appeared behind the little monk’s head, brilliant and sacred. A beam of matching light shot forward, striking the figure directly.

There was a sharp, sizzling sound, like cold water hitting burning oil.

"AAAGH—"

The scream lasted only a moment. The figure’s body dissolved almost instantly, melting away under the overwhelming force. At the same time, the dark, corrupted glow of the Divine Shard vanished. In the blink of an eye, it transformed into a clear, crystalline object. The contaminant energy that had once seeped from it was gone, and the subtle pull it had exerted on the mind had completely disappeared.

Earlier, when the shard had fused, Hayes and the others had gone slack, their eyes glazed over as if they had fallen into a trance. Now they snapped back to themselves abruptly.

"What just happened?" Vale asked, his voice dull with confusion.

Everyone else shook their heads, equally lost.

Only Riley seemed different. Her eyes flickered faintly, her expression tense. She was the only one besides Ethan and Vasuki who had retained even a fragment of awareness. Not fully conscious, but enough to remember what had occurred, and what she remembered clearly terrified her. Hayes and the others, with weaker Soul Energy, had completely succumbed the moment the shard’s influence took hold. Riley had resisted, and that resistance came with the cost of knowing.

Ethan wasn’t surprised that the shard had been purified. What truly caught his attention was something else entirely.

’Vasuki can cleanse contaminant energy.’

The thought had barely formed in his mind when the purified shard suddenly shot forward.

Straight at him.

Vasuki reacted instantly, his figure blurring as he moved to intercept it, but the shard was faster. It veered sharply to the side, slipping past his grasp, then accelerated again, slamming directly into Ethan’s forehead.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

The little monk, who carried himself like an enlightened master, couldn’t stop himself from swearing.

Ethan’s body went rigid. In the next instant, his consciousness was pulled into a strange, unfamiliar space.

Everything around him was white, thick with mist, stretching endlessly in every direction. There was no ground beneath his feet and no sky above, just a uniform expanse that made it impossible to judge distance or scale.

Then a beam of light descended from above, cutting cleanly through the fog. The space shifted, revealing its true form. It was much smaller than he had first thought, perhaps twenty meters across, enclosed by smooth white walls. The light seemed to come from everywhere at once, with no visible source, as if the space itself was made of light.

"Where is this?"

His voice echoed faintly, but nothing answered. He waited, but nothing happened.

He raised his voice and shouted, and this time, something changed.

The world around him transformed abruptly, like stepping into a fully immersive projection. A battlefield unfolded in every direction, vast and chaotic. Countless figures clashed, fighting and killing without pause. Bodies fell, and yet the battle showed no sign of slowing.

Two sides faced each other.

One was clad in uniform armor, their presence unified and oppressive. They looked eerily similar to the figure that had emerged from the shard earlier, and a dark purple-black energy radiated from each of them.

The other side was far less organized, a mix of old and young, humans and beings with strange, unnatural forms. Despite their lack of uniformity, they fought fiercely, holding their ground against overwhelming odds.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he noticed something crucial.

Every single person on the battlefield, no matter which side they belonged to, had a diamond-shaped crystal embedded in their forehead. It was identical in shape to the shard that had entered him, though the colors varied. The resistance fighters bore clear, purified crystals, while the armored army carried the same dark, corrupted purple-black ones.

The resistance was retreating, fighting as they fell back, while the black-armored soldiers advanced without hesitation, trading wounds recklessly as if their own lives meant nothing.

The tide was clearly against the resistance.

Then the sky split with a thunderclap.

A staff descended from above, so massive that Ethan couldn’t see where it began or ended. It crashed down onto the battlefield with overwhelming force.

The impact was catastrophic. A huge section of the battlefield was wiped clean in an instant.

Yet even that wasn’t enough. The battlefield stretched far beyond what that single strike could affect.

A figure stood atop the staff.

Ethan froze.

A monkey, clad in golden armor, a blood-red cape flowing behind him. Two feathers rose from his head, swaying in the wind. The sheer presence he exuded was overwhelming, the kind of figure that commanded attention without effort.

Ethan’s heart began to race uncontrollably. This was the figure he had grown up admiring, the one who had defined heroism in his mind.

Surely... this would turn the tide.

A massive hand formed in the sky, large enough to dwarf mountains, and reached down toward the monkey. The monkey moved instantly. The enormous staff shrank to a manageable size in his grip as he swung it upward to meet the descending hand.

The collision shook the world.

But the hand did not shatter as Ethan had expected. It was pushed back, nothing more.

"What?"

The disbelief hit him hard. Everything he thought he knew about that figure, about his invincibility, about his ability to crush gods and buddhas alike, was suddenly called into question.

The hand struck again and again, and the monkey responded in kind, their clash carrying them further and further away from the battlefield until they disappeared from sight. Thunder continued to rumble in the distance, a sign that their fight was far from over, but here, below, nothing had changed.

The space the staff had cleared was already being filled.

More black-armored soldiers poured in, endless, like a swarm of locusts.

The resistance continued to fall back, their situation growing increasingly desperate. Just as they were on the verge of being completely surrounded, another figure descended from the sky, wreathed in blazing fire.

A man made entirely of flames.

Behind him came another, formed of water, waves crashing down with him as he entered the battlefield.

Fire and water should not coexist, yet the two fought in perfect harmony, moving like brothers. Where their powers remained separate, they cut through the enemy effortlessly. Where they collided, the resulting explosions tore through entire ranks of black-armored soldiers.

For a brief moment, hope returned.

But It didn’t last.

Two figures rose from the opposing side to meet them, one wreathed in ice, the other in fire. They clashed directly with the newcomers, and the four of them quickly moved away from the main battlefield, their power too great to be unleashed without devastating their own allies.

The pattern repeated.

Each time a powerful figure appeared on the resistance side, the black-armored army produced an equal counterpart. No advantage lasted long enough to matter.

The battle dragged on, becoming a brutal war of attrition.

Ethan lost track of time. His initial shock faded, his racing heart slowing as the endless cycle of conflict wore him down.

Then suddenly, his eyes widened again.

An old man appeared on the battlefield, dressed in simple white robes, a gourd hanging from his waist.

The moment Ethan saw him, the name slipped out before he could stop it.

"Morzan?"