Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!-Chapter 904: The Face Below

If it were not for that girl and the two other women standing beside her, the entire supernatural world would have been wiped clean six months ago. It was not an exaggeration or a comforting story people told themselves to sleep at night. It was fact.

The three of them had shattered the Divine Sea Temple’s unstoppable momentum and brought their advance to a dead halt. And afterward, Lyla Silverwood had done something no one else could or would do. She opened the Silverwood hidden territory and turned it into a sanctuary, a place where any energy user who could still breathe was allowed to enter and survive.

The other two major families, Wynn and Hargrave, had not been so fortunate. Their territories were said to be gutted, sealed away and drifting within folded space. Doors that could only be opened from the inside, never from without. Even the Divine Sea Temple, at the height of its power, could not locate them.

Of the original Eight Noble Lineages that once ruled openly, only fragments remained. Matriarch Whitmore was here. Kiara Quinn was here. And a young woman from the Hargraves, barely more than a name and a shadow, was here. That was all.

If Ethan had been present, he would have been stunned speechless. Even the Whitmore territory had collapsed. The Quinns and the Hargraves had lost everything in the open world. Everyone else had vanished completely. No survivors or remnants.

So at this moment, aside from the sealed Wynn and Hargrave territories drifting unseen, the only Noble Lineage with open doors was Silverwood. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

They were the only shelter left.

And the people gathered here had come with a simple, ugly thought. Use Silverwood as a shield. Use Silverwood as a spear. Let them clash head on with the Divine Sea Temple. If Silverwood won, everyone else reclaimed their cults and homes. If Silverwood lost, then those same people would simply crawl back here and hide again.

A perfect plan, really. An easy mark as she was just a girl.

Except that this girl’s words landed like iron nails driven into wood.

Lyla’s meaning had been unmistakable. If you want to stay, shut up and behave. If you do not like it, leave. Shelter was an act of grace, not an obligation, and no one here was entitled to it.

Sir Gideon found himself stuck in place, neither standing nor sitting, trapped in a posture that made both him and his pride ache.

"Heh. Sir Gideon," Donovan Silverwood said lightly, his voice sounding warm and pleasant. "If you have nothing urgent to add, please take a seat. As for what comes next, our Lady Silverwood already has plans."

The Ninth Granduncle’s smile was gentle, almost kind.

Everyone in the hall had known Donovan Silverwood for decades, and that was precisely why they were unsettled. This was not the man they remembered. Where was the hot tempered firebrand who used to slam tables and curse enemies? In the past year, he had turned completely around, always smiling, and never raising his voice.

Sir Gideon shot him a grateful look.

’What a good man’, he thought. ’What a saint.’

Then he turned his head and glared at the old schemers sitting beside and behind him, the ones who had pushed him forward and used him as bait. His jaw clenched as he started to sit.

"Old man," Matriarch Whitmore said coolly, her eyes on Donovan. "You’ve gone soft."

Donovan laughed. "Ah, but I’ve had an epiphany. Why rage before the kill? Little shrimp like this are far more satisfying to crush while smiling."

His expression never changed, but his eyes flicked briefly toward Sir Gideon.

Sir Gideon felt it instantly, like twin blades of ice pressed against his spine. His back prickled. Sweat burst from his skin and then turned cold, as though frozen in place. His body shuddered, and his half seated posture locked completely.

The two elders beside him, who had been smirking moments earlier, felt their smiles freeze as well.

"Of course," Donovan continued lightly, "the real vermin are the ones hiding behind others. They’re far more detestable. If I had not promised Lyla..." He paused, as if considering the thought. "...I would have crushed every last one already."

The smirks vanished.

The killing intent wrapped around those two men like a tightening noose. Their faces twisted, caught somewhere between forced smiles and naked terror, grotesque and unmoving. Only then did Sir Gideon feel the pressure on himself lift.

He glanced at the schemers beside him and felt a surge of private delight at their expressions, like men who had swallowed something foul and could not spit it out. Outwardly, he showed nothing. He sat down slowly, quietly, with his head lowered.

"All right," Lyla said from the head of the hall. "Let’s discuss resource allocation. We don’t know how long we’ll need to hold out, and we cannot resupply. That means rationing."

Every person in the room heard her clearly, and every one of them felt a wince twist through their chest. Still, no one protested. When you lived under someone else’s roof, you bowed your head.

The price of entering Silverwood territory had been agreed upon from the start. Everything you brought became part of a unified pool. No exceptions.

---

Meanwhile, far below, Ethan continued to fall.

The walls around him grew colder, sharper, coated in a biting frost that seemed to sink straight into the bones. Yet something else was changing. The oppressive laws that had crushed his psychic sense and forced it inward were weakening, thinning out as he descended.

At first, his perception stretched only a few meters. Then dozens. Then hundreds. His breathing steadied.

This was recovery.

Eventually, his psychic sense surged outward to nearly ten thousand meters. His eyes narrowed. "There is a bottom," he muttered. "So it isn’t truly bottomless."

At twenty thousand meters, his senses finally touched ground. A vast cavern opened below him, wide and dark, with solid earth at its base. Ethan slammed his claws into the wall.

SCREEEEECH. SPARK.

The stone was no longer something Ursar’s Claws could slice through effortlessly, and that was a blessing. The resistance created friction, enough for him to slow his descent in a controlled slide.

He pushed his soul sense deeper into the cavern, and froze.

Something was there.

A figure stood at the bottom, barely visible in the gloom, motionless and looking straight up at him, as if waiting.

The face staring back was his own, Identical in every detail.

The pull, that calling force drawing him downward, came from that figure. So did the hostility, raw and unmistakable, radiating upward like heat. The expression on that mirrored face was twisted with pure rage.

"No way," Ethan whispered. "Do I have a twin?"

For the first time in a long while, doubt crept into his thoughts. The energy signature matched perfectly. Everything matched.

’Did Mom have twins and just dump one down here?’

No. That made no sense.

He forced himself to look past the doppelganger and took in the cavern itself. The walls were wrong. Vines covered everything, thick and pulsing like exposed veins, rising and falling as though they were breathing. All of them stretched deeper into the darkness beyond the cavern floor.

Ethan tried to probe farther, but found nothing. Not suppression, or resistance. His senses were simply erased, dissolved by the deeper laws at work below.

Above him, Blackie finally slowed his descent, his movements sluggish and unsteady.

"Boss..." Blackie’s voice echoed faintly, hollow and strained.

The endless fall had nearly broken him, not because he was weak, but because it had not lasted hours or even a single day.

It had been three days, three days of nothing but falling.