Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!-Chapter 866: Traces Beneath the Polar Snow

’Grand Ethereal Array.’

The final three words echoed in Ethan’s mind, unfamiliar yet carrying a deep, unsettling sense of recognition.

It wasn’t just "Ethereal" or "Array" on their own. It was the combination that mattered. Together, they implied something far beyond the ordinary.

The Path of Ethereal contained countless branches, each distinct from the next. Could this massive sphere, gushing with dense energy, represent one of those branches? A manifestation of the Ethereal focused on arrays, taken to an extreme?

If so, then what kind of array master had reached such an absurd level? And who had built an array like this, in this place? More importantly, where was all this energy coming from?

Ethan narrowed his focus, extending his perception to feel the aura radiating from the sphere. Almost immediately, he felt something was wrong.

This energy was incompatible with the power that flowed from the Ethereal system. At the same time, it didn’t match the signature of the Divine Sea Temple’s inhabitants either.

The energy from Ethereal wasn’t originally native to Earth. The Divine Sea Temple’s energy, on the other hand, was undeniably part of Earth’s essence.

So this energy spilling out of the sphere, threaded with faint gray strands, what was it? Divine Sea Temple energy carried a deep blue tint, like seawater under moonlight. Ethereal energy was milky-white, intangible, almost dreamlike.

From Ethan’s current perspective, the ambient energy saturating Earth felt hopelessly muddled. Gray intertwined with white in a chaotic weave. He had no idea what absorbing that mess would do to an Energy user.

He kept it all at bay using his Soul Sense. The energy circulating within his body was a pale green, stable and familiar. That strange gray energy? He wasn’t letting it anywhere near his system. Even with a constitution capable of refining and expelling almost anything, he had no desire to let that unknown filth take a leisurely tour through his insides.

This eruption felt wrong. Deeply wrong.

"Oh, right," Ethan said suddenly, turning his head. "Blackie. Is Ethereal still operational?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. You wouldn’t know."

One look at Blackie’s blank expression confirmed it. The guy had never even logged into the game.

Ethan shifted his focus again. "Actually... Shatterstar. The continuous surveillance order I issued on ’Sandra’. Is it still active?"

He had given Shatterstar a real-time monitoring command back then. Unless he had explicitly revoked it, the ship should still be observing.

[Beep... Retrieving feed.]

Shatterstar didn’t respond verbally. Instead, it immediately pulled up the footage.

A video file spanning more than a year appeared before Ethan’s eyes. The progress bar showed it was live, still updating in real time.

The screen was filled with an endless expanse of blinding white snow.

"Where is this?" Ethan asked.

Shatterstar remained silent.

Ethan dragged the playback slider. As the footage skimmed forward, he saw that for an incredibly long time, Shatterstar’s surveillance had been locked onto this static, snow-covered scene. He continued dragging, skipping through nearly two-thirds of the massive file.

Then, suddenly, a shadow flickered across the screen.

Ethan stopped instantly. With a file this long, even the slightest movement of his finger skipped a significant stretch of time.

When he lifted his hand, a group of people filled the screen. A group he recognized immediately.

Uncle Jed. Regis. Leo. Victor. Dragon Child. Markham.

They were all there. But Lyla was missing. So were Rainie and Amber.

Ethan’s heart tightened. Why were they all here? Had something happened?

At the front of the group, a gigantic wolf was charging forward. Shatterstar’s primary perspective was locked onto it, which meant Sandra and her father were riding on its back. With them was a young girl, unmistakably the wolf clan’s princess.

The giant wolf was sprinting at a terrifying speed. Behind it, Uncle Jed and the others struggled to keep up. Jed and Regis kept glancing over their shoulders, their expressions tense with unmistakable worry.

Then Ethan noticed Leo.

Leo was wearing the humanoid combat mech Ethan had personally given him. But its side was torn open by a massive, jagged gash, as if something had ripped straight through it.

Ethan’s brow furrowed sharply. What could damage that mech? It had been built by Shatterstar itself, using materials far beyond Earth’s standard technology.

Suddenly, the giant wolf vanished.

It looked as if it had run straight into an invisible barrier or seal. Regis and the others disappeared one after another, swallowed by the same unseen boundary. The footage froze on the empty, snow-covered landscape.

Only for a moment.

A lone figure appeared.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. This was the shadow that had made him stop scrolling.

The man was from the Divine Sea Temple.

He wore robes of violet and gold, embroidered with intricate metallic thread. A plaque hung from his belt, engraved with a single number.

01.

His face was concealed behind a mask.

The man searched the area methodically but found nothing. He was clearly the one pursuing Leo’s group. And judging by the damage to the mech, he was likely responsible for that as well.

Ethan’s attention lingered on the plaque. It was their ranking system. One through one hundred and eight. He remembered the steward he’d seen at the Serenity Hotel. That man’s plaque had read 03.

And that steward had died centuries ago.

If the Divine Sea Temple didn’t recycle their numbers, then this "01" was at least several hundred, possibly over a thousand, years old.

A few strands of hair and beard were visible beneath the man’s hood and mask. Jet black. Not a hint of white.

The steward continued searching for a long while. Then, without warning, he clutched his chest and began gasping violently, as if he were suffocating. In a panic, he pulled out a vial and took a deep gulp.

The choking subsided almost instantly.

Ethan’s gaze sharpened, locking onto the vial. According to the timestamp, this footage had been recorded in the polar region. Back then, and even now, that area should have been completely devoid of ambient Energy Pool activity.

The steward’s reaction looked exactly like a fish drowning in air. But one drink from that vial, and he recovered immediately.

Was that the secret? The method that allowed Divine Sea Temple members to survive away from the sea?

After regaining his breath, the old steward stood silently for a moment, then turned and left.

That answered at least one question. Ethan now knew where the others had gone. Even if Lyla wasn’t with them, Leo and the rest would surely know where she was.

Which meant there was no avoiding it.

The polar region it was.

He had planned to go there eventually anyway. Since the timing aligned, he might as well head there now.

"Shatterstar," Ethan said calmly, "set course for the final coordinates in this video."

Shatterstar acknowledged the command, locked onto the location, and pushed its speed to the maximum sustainable limit within Earth’s atmosphere. It couldn’t go all out here. Ethan had tested that once before. At full power, atmospheric friction would rip Shatterstar out of its stealth field, turning it into a blazing meteor.

On Earth, its thrust was capped at fifteen percent.

Even so, it was blisteringly fast.

In roughly twenty minutes, the view outside shifted into an endless stretch of pristine white. They had entered the polar region. Shatterstar didn’t slow, slicing through the frozen sky like an arrow aimed at its mark.

Then Ethan felt it.

A faint tug. Almost imperceptible. A subtle sense of being drawn toward something.

Even from within Shatterstar, he instinctively turned his gaze in a specific direction, staring out into the vast white void.