Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!-Chapter 839: Under Her Protection

The girl hesitated, her resolve wavering as Ethan finished speaking. Sandra glanced back over her shoulder toward the room behind her, where her legless father lay within his open VR Capsule, the soft hum of machinery filling the quiet house.

"W—we should probably stay," she said at last. But there was a firmness beneath her voice that surprised him.

Ethan blinked, studying her more carefully. He could see it now, the flicker of temptation she was trying to suppress. The reluctance wasn’t truly hers. It belonged to her father. That alone puzzled him. Why wouldn’t a man in his condition want to be moved somewhere safer? The developers should have paid them generously to vacate this area. Every surrounding structure bore bright demolition markings, yet this two-story house stood untouched, free of spray paint or legal warnings. They hadn’t signed. They were holding out.

As Ethan remained silent, the monastic woman exhaled slowly, the last edge of hostility draining from her posture. She had made her judgment.

"Be at ease, young man," she said calmly. "They are under my protection. My brother..." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head as if unwilling to continue.

Ethan’s brows rose. "Your brother?" He looked past her, instinctively searching for the connection. The revelation caught him off guard.

She nodded once.

From the open window above, Sandra leaned out again, suddenly animated. "Boss! Yeah, this is my aunt. That feels better to say than before. You probably forgot my name, didn’t you? It’s Sandra! It’s fine, really." She laughed awkwardly. "My aunt’s super strong. I didn’t even know I had an aunt like her until she showed up."

Ethan let his gaze linger, first on the woman, then on Sandra, and finally he sent a careful thread of Soul Sense toward the man inside the house. The resemblance was faint but unmistakable, carried in the slope of the brow and the shape of the eyes. The puzzle deepened. Sandra and her father were baseline humans, barely touched by Energy despite their time in Ethereal. Yet this woman, their blood relative, was a fully awakened Energy User of considerable strength.

That wasn’t something that happened by accident.

True talent was rare. From what Ethan had learned, the old lineages and hidden organisations searched relentlessly for it, usually identifying candidates in childhood. The more ethical factions negotiated with families. The others simply took what they wanted. Not every missing child case was mundane. Some were quiet recruitments into the supernatural world, carefully concealed to avoid drawing the Ninth Division’s attention. There were darker paths too, solitary traditions that operated in fear of exposure, hunted down by so-called righteous crusaders. Ethan had long since grown cynical about those. In his experience, morality was often just a banner waved by people protecting their own interests.

Sandra’s confidence in her aunt wasn’t misplaced. Ethan had felt that power himself. It was the reason he had come here first. But the promise of protection gave him pause. The woman radiated raw potential, yes, but everything about her demeanor suggested inexperience. Someone who had survived real conflict didn’t issue warnings. They acted. Talkers die first, as the saying went. The truly dangerous ones never announced themselves.

Still, it wasn’t his call to make.

He nodded slowly. "Alright. Just be careful." He offered Sandra a few practical safety reminders, keeping his tone light, before turning away.

As he did, he felt it. A subtle shift in the woman’s Energy field, a release, like a breath she had been holding. ’She stayed tense until the moment I left.’ That realization made him glance back.

The aunt met his eyes and smiled.

It was a gentle smile, serene and almost maternal. And yet, something about it unsettled him. It felt practiced. Hollow in a way he couldn’t quite articulate. He couldn’t identify the flaw, only the instinctive wrongness of it.

He gave a short nod and walked on.

Once he was several hundred meters away, Ethan summoned his Mech armor and rose into the sky again, circling back at altitude. From high above, he hovered silently and extended a hair-thin thread of Soul Sense toward the house.

He watched.

Minutes passed. The aunt returned to her meditation cushion and slipped back into her trance. Sandra finished cooking, moving quietly, deliberately. She set a small table beside her father’s Capsule and arranged a simple meal of vegetarian dishes, clearly prepared with care and consideration. The three of them ate together in near silence.

Ethan focused on details. The aunt lifted her spoon, took a few small bites, and chewed slowly. For just a moment, an almost imperceptible frown touched her lips before she smoothed it away. She set her spoon down soon after, barely having eaten.

That was strange.

The food looked fine. Sandra and her father ate without hesitation, clearly enjoying the meal. An Energy User, especially one of her apparent strength, should have required more sustenance, not less. A picky eater? Possibly. But stacked atop everything else, it fed his unease. The woman was hiding something. He simply couldn’t see what.

After several more minutes yielded nothing new, Ethan withdrew his Sense. He couldn’t afford to linger. Before leaving the area, he issued a silent command to Shatterstar.

[Command: Initiate persistent surveillance on designated coordinates. Passive sensors only. Log all anomalies.]

With that settled, he banked sharply and streaked across the sky toward the opposite side of Ember City. The Mad Engineer was still holed up underground. Clever, yes, but not invulnerable. Any determined Energy User with decent sensory skills could eventually sniff him out.

Ethan was currently in the far east. The engineer’s hideout lay to the west, in a neighborhood that was older but well kept, rows of modest bungalows quietly resisting decay. Crossing the city meant flying over its exposed heart.

Below him, the change was unmistakable. The streets were eerily empty of civilian traffic. The few figures moving with purpose were almost all Energy Users, mutants, or otherwise enhanced individuals. The hidden world wasn’t hiding anymore. It was stepping forward to fill the vacuum left by terrified civilians.

He spotted small groups traveling in the same direction, converging toward the Ninth Division’s main administrative complex. They were complying. Registering. Paying their tax.

’A public demonstration goes a long way,’ he thought grimly. The massacre in Harbor City had been a brutal message, but an effective one. Without it, his broadcast would have been dismissed as bluster. He would have been just another loud voice shouting into the void.

Everyone feared death. But Energy Users feared it more.

They had touched something beyond the mundane, felt the currents of life itself. Even a low-tier practitioner who had just awakened their Energy could expect to live close to two centuries with proper care. As power grew, so did longevity. Once survival and comfort were secured, what remained but the ancient pursuit of time itself?

Who, with that promise before them, would willingly throw it away?