Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!-Chapter 860: The False Brewmaster Awakens

Leo staggered forward and equipped his wine cask, which materialized strapped across his back with a dull thud. In his current state, even standing upright was a struggle, let alone bearing its weight. His knees buckled slightly, and he would have collapsed if Ethan had not stepped in, bracing him from the side and helping him lift the cask into position. Together, they slid it carefully into the carved depression at the front of the stone coffin.

Clunk... Clack... Clunk...

Ancient mechanisms groaned as they awakened after ages of dormancy. The iron staff embedded in the coffin lid shuddered, then began spinning rapidly, its motion growing faster with each passing second. With a deep, grinding roar that vibrated through the chamber floor, the massive stone lid slid downward like a vertical gate retracting into the earth.

ROOOAR!

A thunderous bellow burst from the widening gap, followed by a thick crimson mist that surged outward like a living thing.

"Ugh..." Leo swayed violently, his vision blurring as his legs nearly gave out beneath him.

"What is it?" Ethan snapped, gripping Leo’s arm and hauling him upright before he could collapse.

"All my attributes... reduced by ninety-nine percent," Leo forced out, his face drained of all color.

Ethan sucked in a sharp breath. "Damn. You would have been dead already if you came alone. Emery! Get someone over here, pull him back now!"

At his shout, two nearby players rushed over, each taking one of Leo’s arms and quickly escorting him toward the rear of the formation, where healers and support players clustered.

The bloody mist continued to spread across the chamber, but Ethan felt no debuff effects trigger. Whatever it was, it did not corrode or poison. The smell alone, however, was overwhelming, thick with iron and decay, turning the air nauseatingly heavy.

A voice rolled out from the half-open coffin, distorted and grating, like rusted blades scraping against stone.

"ROAR... The true successor of the Brewmaster... you have finally come! The Savage Staff... the Cosmos Cask... HAHAHA... and my Orb of Spirits! The three sacred artifacts are reunited at last! I shall recreate the celestial brew! This world will remember only ME! I, the one true Brewmaster, shall be ETERNAL!"

BOOM!

The coffin exploded.

Stone shards and slabs detonated outward in all directions, slamming into the surrounding players like a storm of siege ammunition. The front-line Shield Tanks reacted instantly, slamming their shields into the ground and raising their Shield Walls just in time. Even so, the impact was brutal. Several tanks groaned as their arms trembled violently, boots digging furrows into the stone floor as they fought to hold their ground.

After a deafening cascade of impacts, the chamber fell into an eerie silence. Dust drifted slowly through the air as the tanks lowered their shields one by one.

Ethan had already shifted into Bear Form the moment the coffin detonated. Thick fur bristled across his massive frame as he repeatedly layered Iron Hide, each heavy chunk of flying stone feeding his Rage and allowing him to stack the damage reduction buff higher and higher. By the time the barrage ended, he had built it up to twelve layers, an absurd number under normal circumstances, yet even then, the force drove him backward step by step.

When the dust finally settled, he found himself a dozen paces from the dais.

Something stood where the coffin had been.

It was not tall or imposing in stature. Instead, it was short and hunched, its body shriveled and leathery, with skin stretched tight over bone. A long, prehensile tail curled behind it, twitching slightly. In one clawed hand, it held Leo’s black-iron staff, the Savage Staff, cradling it with unmistakable reverence as its sunken eyes drank in every detail.

"Holy shit... that’s a monkey? Don’t tell me its surname is Sun," Emery blurted out, voicing what half the raid was thinking as he referenced the legendary Monkey King.

"It’s an ape, yes," Ethan replied calmly from the side, eyes locked on the creature. "But not stone-born. Its flesh is... dried out. Desiccated."

The creature ignored them completely. With a casual flick of its wrist, a clasp along the Savage Staff slid open and latched neatly into a metal hoop on the Cosmos Cask. In one smooth motion, it slung the staff over its shoulder, the massive cask now hanging behind it like a grotesque backpack. Then it opened its mouth and spat out a milky-white sphere.

Snap!

The orb, unmistakably the Orb of Spirits, was pressed into a socket at the top of the Savage Staff, locking into place with a faint pulse of light.

Only then did its gaze shift, sweeping past Ethan and landing on Leo’s frail figure at the rear of the formation. "Hmm?" it muttered. "You are also... Grave-touched?" Its eyes widened, and the next moment it threw its head back in raucous laughter. "HAHAHA! To think that the heir to the Brewmaster’s legacy would be one of the Grave-touched, and of such... common blood! Come. Bow before me as your master. Do this, or every last one of you dies here today."

It raised a clawed finger and beckoned lazily.

"This NPC talks way too much damn shit!" Emery shouted. "Tanks, lock it down! Kill it!"

He hurled an Explosive Trap without hesitation, the device arcing through the air toward the withered ape.

At his command, dozens of Shield Tanks surged forward as one.

BANG!

The trap detonated against the creature’s chest.

-32!

A small, two-digit damage number floated up.

"It’s taking damage!" someone yelled. "Hit it, hit it!"

A wave of relief rippled through the group. Their raid composition leaned heavily toward physical damage, with limited magic support. If physical attacks failed to hurt it, they would be in serious trouble.

"Insignificant insects!" the creature snarled.

As the first wave of tanks closed in, it threw its head back and roared. In one fluid motion, it swung the Savage Staff, the Cosmos Cask still attached, in a wide horizontal arc.

WHUMP!

The sound cracked through the chamber like a cannon firing.

Before they could even reach striking distance, the front-line tanks were smashed aside by the swinging cask. Shields warped and buckled, bodies lifted clean off the ground and flung through the air like broken dolls.

Ethan’s pupils shrank. Shield Tanks were built like fortresses, boasting absurd strength and defensive stats. For a single, basic swing without a visible skill activation to scatter them so easily was deeply alarming.

The first rank was obliterated. The second rank tripped over the fallen, but the raid did not panic. Training and repetition kicked in instantly. The third and fourth ranks vaulted over their downed allies, the fourth bracing their shields tightly against the backs of the third to reinforce the charge.

"Charge!" twenty voices roared in perfect unison. The air filled with the thunderous sound of armored boots pounding stone.

WHUMP! 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The creature reversed its swing effortlessly, the Cosmos Cask whipping back the other way.

This time, Ethan caught a brief flash of white light from the Orb of Spirits embedded in the staff. The instant it pulsed, a violent vortex of compressed air erupted around the cask, acting like a thruster and accelerating the swing far beyond what raw strength alone could achieve.

"Look out!" Ethan shouted.

Too late.

The charging tanks collided head-on with the turbo-charged cask. The impact was catastrophic. A deafening blast of force tore through the formation, and half of the leading tanks in the third rank vanished outright, their health bars blinking out in a flash of white light as they were instantly killed.

"HAHAHA! DIE! DIE! ALL OF YOU!" the creature shrieked, hoisting the staff and cask back onto its shoulder.

Then, despite its small frame and the massive weight it carried, it bent its legs and leaped. Not toward the remaining tanks, but high into the air, arcing directly toward the clustered backline where Emery, Lily Silverwood, and the ranged damage dealers were positioned.

"Scatter! Now!" Lily shouted, her figure blurring as she activated Blink and vanished from her original spot.

The backline dissolved into chaos as players dove, rolled, and sprinted in every direction.

"Keg Tos—" the creature began to shout from the apex of its leap, preparing to hurl the Cosmos Cask downward.

Ethan recognized the skill name instantly.

It was Leo’s ability.

"Toss this, you ugly bastard!" Ethan growled, his voice suddenly right behind the creature’s ear.