Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!-Chapter 851: The Vanishing Point

The guy in the stands kept babbling, spinning his tall tale louder and louder, but Ethan didn’t hear a single word of it. His attention was locked entirely on the arena and on Leo.

All Ethan knew was that Leo’s skill was terrifyingly impressive. The lock-on alone was bad enough, but there was more to it than that. It radiated danger, the kind that crawled up your spine and told you that if this hit, you were not walking away clean.

He didn’t know the skill’s full effects, but he didn’t need to. If it had even a hint of crowd control, getting clipped would open him up to a brutal follow-up. And Leo wasn’t some run-of-the-mill Monk either. He was a Brewmaster, a hidden class with the word "master" sitting smugly in its name. Any class bold enough to brand itself like that had no business being weak. Ethan had seen Leo tank before. The damage output was ridiculous for a pure tank, and his skills were layered with control effects. Slows, at the very least. Judging by the sheer oppressive presence of the charging, bull-shaped phantom, a simple slow was probably the least of his problems.

The worst part was that he was already locked on.

There was no backing out now.

Serves me right for running my mouth, Ethan thought bitterly. He’d just called that nun-player a noob for talking too much mid-fight. Talk too much, die fast. Real poetic. Not even a full day later, and his own big mouth was about to get him flattened. Leo had pinpointed his exact location purely because Ethan couldn’t resist speaking up.

No choice. He had to eat the hit and pray he could mitigate whatever came next if he got CC’d.

He was just about to shift into Bear Form and trigger Iron Hide when his eyes flicked down to his skill bar out of habit.

"Huh?" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

A skill icon he’d never seen before was glowing, ready to be used.

’Oh, right’, he realized. ’The fair-duel arena gives you the full skill kit for free...’

The unfamiliar icon was Shadowmeld, the Druid’s core pivot skill, equal parts defense and offense, usable in any form. In Panther Form, it granted combat stealth. A real vanish.

Stealth breaks all targeting, the tooltip might as well have been yelling at him.

Ethan’s eyes lit up. He didn’t hesitate. Shadowmeld, then immediately Stealth.

The sensation was instant. A strange weightlessness washed over him, and the suffocating pressure of being locked on evaporated like mist under sunlight.

Panther’s Agility activated. Movement speed surged by seventy percent.

The invisible Panther blurred sideways, moving on instinct more than thought, just as the black-iron staff came crashing down through the space he’d occupied a split second earlier. The weapon’s tip had transformed into the lashing tail of the so-called Sky-Bull Serpent, and it struck with terrifying force.

Leo, gripping the staff tightly, had been riding a wave of absolute confidence. He was already mentally lining up his follow-up burst. Savage Charge did exactly what Ethan had feared. Massive damage, knockback, a knockdown paired with a brief stun, followed by a vicious slow. One clean hit would let Leo unload his entire combo. He wasn’t sure he could outright kill Ethan through Bear Form’s bulk, but landing a full rotation would be a win all on its own.

Maybe, Leo thought, hope flickering, just maybe the burst will be enough...

That thought shattered mid-calculation.

His target simply vanished.

The invisible tether of the lock-on snapped, leaving him striking at nothing.

BOOM!

The staff, still carrying the momentum and phantom beast energy, slammed into the ground and kept going. It tore a savage path through the arena floor, dirt and stone exploding outward as the charge carved forward unchecked.

Leo felt the hollow punch of wasted effort deep in his gut. It was like swinging a sledgehammer with everything you had, only to hit thin air.

The spectators, who a heartbeat earlier were convinced Ethan was about to be launched halfway across the arena, collectively froze. Anyone with real PvP experience knew that a skill like that usually meant a guaranteed hit. The image of the so-called Druid God getting bulldozed by a spectral bull had been all but inevitable.

And then he disappeared.

Skyblade was dragged forward by his own momentum, the staff gouging a trench more than a foot deep and stretching over thirty yards before the energy finally dissipated and the weapon shrank back into an ordinary black rod. Leo staggered to a stop, barely keeping his balance.

A portion of the crowd simmered with disappointment and petty irritation. So sneaky! They recognized what had happened immediately. Forced stealth. Shadowmeld. Most Druids didn’t have access to it yet, but Arena regulars knew the skill existed. It was a true vanish, similar to a Rogue’s, breaking almost any form of targeting. Sure, there were counters. A Priest’s rare War Shackles, a Hunter’s Mark. But those were niche tools. For the average player, a stealthed opponent was bad news. A stealthed Druid was worse.

Others, though, were buzzing with excitement. Skyblade’s charge had been nothing short of brutal. Who cared that it missed? It had ripped the earth apart. The raw, primal force behind Savage Charge made more than a few spectators squirm in their seats, suddenly reconsidering their class choices and eyeing Monk with new interest.

But the truly experienced fighters weren’t admiring the spectacle anymore.

They were watching what came after.

"Skyblade’s in trouble," several of them muttered almost in unison, eyes sharp.

"Huh?" Casual viewers nearby looked over, confused.

The arena answered for them.

The instant Ethan vanished, Leo’s heart sank.

’I’m screwed.’

Long before becoming a Brewmaster, Leo had spent countless hours grinding the Arena as a Shield Tank. He knew exactly what that vanish meant the moment it happened.

’Idiot,’ he cursed himself. ’How did I forget about Shadowmeld?’

To be fair, in all his time fighting alongside Ethan, the guy almost never used his Feral forms during group runs. When Leo tanked, Ethan usually lounged in Owl Form, lazily flinging spells like a backline tourist. Only when Leo was on the brink of death did Ethan reluctantly shift into Bear Form and take over. Direct PvP experience against a Feral Druid was something Leo simply didn’t have. That crucial skill had slipped clean out of his mind.

One mistake.

And now he was committed.

He knew the recovery window on a missed charge all too well. The animation lock was brutal. When you hit, the impact masked it. When you missed, you were left standing there like an offering.

A wide-open piñata.

And with Ethan’s instincts and combat sense, there was no chance he would let an opening like this go to waste.