"Soul entity protection!"

Andrew’s face turned pale.

A soul entity protection was something few people knew and Andrew was amongst those people.

It happened when a being who had reached a level close to Legendary — a Pseudo-Legendary Ultra — took a fragment of their own soul, and placed that fragment into the body of one of their descendants to prevent from true death giving them a chance to escape.

It was an absolute, last-resort cheat!

An advantage that makes common warriors weep with envy and frustration.

You could level up and grind for a hundred years, fight ten thousand battles, and still lose to someone whose ancestor had placed a soul fragment inside them before they were even born.

This was the advantage of a major family.

The cost of fragmenting the soul was enormous.

Even a Pseudo-Legendary Ultra would be weakened for years, perhaps decades, after giving away even one percent of their soul.

Only the most powerful bloodlines could afford such a sacrifice, and only for their most prized heirs.

But that was not even the worst part. If the soul fragment was strong enough the soul entity protection could do more than just defend. It could release an attack.

And an attack from a Pseudo-Legendary Ultra was no laughing matter. Such an attack could raze an entire continent to ashes.

"Seems you know quite a bit for your level," the phantom dragon man spoke, its voice echoing like rolling thunder.

The ancestor glanced down at Elyssa, his gaze flashed with disappointment. "I had such high hopes for you. Disappointing. Seems like your sister will have the throne instead."

Elyssa’s face flushed red and she spat out another mouthful of blood, Her entire body trembled from shame and rage.

The throne was everything to her and was the reason she had entered the Culling Game. It was the reason she had trained her entire life. It was the one thing she had to earn, and now her ancestor was casually stripping it away from her with a single sentence.

She gritted her teeth and managed to speak.

"Ancestor, please... look at his blade."

The ancestor’s eyes moved lazily, from Elyssa to Andrew. But the moment his ancient gaze landed on Andrew, everything changed.

Instantly, a pressure like twenty mountains crashing down simultaneously slammed onto Andrew’s shoulders!

Andrew’s knees buckled instantly, slamming into the ground with a heavy thud that cracked the ground 5 meters radius!

He quickly planted his blade into the earth, using it as a harness, his muscles screaming, his veins popping, as he struggled not to fall flat on his face! The ground beneath him continued to sink, unable to withstand the pressure!

"What’s the meaning of this!?" Andrew gritted his teeth, feeling as though his spine was about to snap.

But the ancestor was no longer looking at Andrew. He was looking at the blade.

The ancestor narrowed his ancient eyes. The casual indifference was gone now, replaced by curiosity.

The ancestor stared intently at the GodSlayer Blade, his eyes flickering with subtle light as he tried to peer into the weapon’s nature. And for the first time, he found himself looking at something he could not understand.

"Hm?" the ancestor murmured, tilting his head slightly. "Even I can’t see through this weapon?" He paused, considering. "Could it be a Legendary Blade? Or perhaps... a Mythic Blade?"

Elyssa’s dragon body began regenerating her wounds, as the massive, gaping hole in her chest started closing. She was in disbelief when she heard his words. "That’s impossible! There’s barely two in the entire Orion Continent! How could this kid have it?"

"Kid," the ancestor spoke. "If you tell me how you managed to get this weapon into the Culling Game, I will grant you a chance to live."

Andrew chuckled inwardly, despite the agonizing pain. ’Is this bastard kidding?’

"Fuck off!"

This soul entity could release level suppression which meant that It could most likely attack.

As for the man’s promise, it’s obviously a lie. If he didn’t die, Elyssa would never advance. The man was obviously lying when he said he will give him a chance to live.

So what was the point of being polite? What was the point of begging and cooperating? He was dead either way. At least this way, he would die on his own terms, with his dignity intact and his middle finger raised toward the heavens.

The ancestor’s expression did not change.

He simply looked at Andrew with the same calm detachment that a human might look at an insect that had failed to understand its place in the world.

"Hm. No worries," the ancestor said quietly. "When I kill you, I will naturally gain the weapon."

The ancestor then turned to Elyssa.

"You will bring the weapon to me. And if it is what I think it is, I will ignore this mistake of yours."

Elyssa gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. "What about the throne—"

The ancestor shot her a cold glance, and she immediately shut her mouth, her body trembling in fear.

"Yes, Ancestor."

The ancestor returned his gaze to Andrew and raised his slender pale finger and set it above Andrew’s body from the distance.

Instantly, the sky changed. The blue clouds above began to swirl violently, spinning in a massive, churning vortex that expanded outward with terrifying speed. The wind howled, tearing across the arena with enough force to strip the bark from trees and send boulders tumbling. The vortex grew and grew, swallowing the sky, until the entire heavens above were nothing but a spinning, roaring maelstrom of cloud and wind.

Suddenly, the white swirling clouds erupted with light and transformed into pure blue flames!

The flames converged in the heavens, swirling and condensing, sucking the heat and energy from the atmosphere until they formed a massive, flaming finger half a kilometer long!

The finger radiated a heat so intense that the air around it turned to plasma!

The ancestor brought his finger down, the blue flaming finger instantly shot downward, tearing through the sound barrier multiple times, aiming directly for Andrew like the finger of a divine being!

"In your next life," the ancestor spoke, his voice calm and indifferent. "know your limit and stick to your place."

"KA-BOOOOOOOM!"

The impact was like the end of the world. The area Andrew was standing in vanished in an instant, consumed by a hellscape of blue flames.

The ground was vaporized. Stone, earth, metal, everything was destroyed and reduced to a crater of molten rock that glowed white-hot at the center and faded to angry red at the edges.

Columns of blue energy erupted upward, punching through the atmosphere and reaching into the stratosphere, visible for hundreds of miles in every direction.

The shockwave flattened everything in the arena.

Trees were uprooted, boulders shattered, and the land itself was reshaped by the sheer force of the blast.

The heat was so intense that even the air burned, igniting secondary fires that spread outward from the epicenter like a wave of destruction.

And then, silence.

The blue flames flickered and faded. The molten rock slowly began to cool, hissing and cracking as it contracted.

The air was thick with ash and the acrid smell of burning. The crater where the arena had been was enormous, a perfect, bowl-shaped scar on the face of the earth, as if a god had pressed a finger into wet clay.

The ancestor’s phantom body instantly turned transparent. It seemed the attacked had drained this remenant soul as it turned to Elyssa. "I will be expecting you."