My Infinite Cultivation System-Chapter 68: Level 47

Alex had just appeared three thousand kilometers away, and he still heard it.

The tremendous, soul-wrenching roar reached across the distance as if space itself meant nothing to its source. Alex stumbled, nearly dropping the unconscious dragon, as the sound washed over him. It carried emotions that transcended language: rage, fear, desperation, and a love so fierce it could burn stars.

"Damn! If I had been a little bit slower," he whispered, his face was pale.

He did not know, that he had stolen a once-in-a-lifetime mutant dragon child. He did not know that this creature had been born from two nebula-ranked flood dragons, beings so powerful that they could swim through the void between stars. He did not know that its parents had waited millions of years for this birth, that they had sacrificed portions of their own cultivation to ensure their child would be extraordinary.

He only knew that he had a prize in his arms, and he needed to secure it before it was too late.

Looking at the fainted dragon child, Alex placed his trembling hand on its head. The scales were warm, almost hot to the touch, and he could feel the powerful life force pulsing beneath them. It was strong, far stronger than him in raw power, and that thought both terrified and excited him.

"Initiate the contract," he commanded.

[Ding! Host is initiating his first beast contract.]

[Ding! The subject is unconscious.]

[Ding! Forceful soul binding is activating.]

The dragon woke up.

It woke up screaming.

The sheer pain of soul binding was unlike anything the young creature had ever experienced. It was as if its very essence was being rewritten, its identity torn apart and reconstructed according to alien specifications. The dragon roared, a pitiful sound that tore at something deep in Alex’s chest.

Alex’s heart started pounding so violently that he thought it might explode. If its parents somehow learned of its whereabouts, if that roar carried even a fraction of the distance the earlier one had, he was dead. There was no scenario where he survived the wrath of it’s parents.

But then he heard the notification again.

[Ding! The beast is successfully contracted. Its genetic code is being rewritten. It can use divine sense now.]

As soon as the words formed in his mind, a tremendous force entered his body.

It was like being struck by lightning made of pure power. Two hundred gigatons of force, equivalent to the full strength of a martial saint level 2, flooded through every cell, every meridian, every atom of his being.

Alex gasped, his eyes flying open as the power settled into him like it had always been there.

He instantly looked at his panel.

[Strength: 208.5 Gigaton]

[Ultimate Martial Prowess: Level 6 Martial Saint]

Alex wanted to laugh out loudly. He wanted to scream, to dance, to challenge the heavens themselves. Now his own strength was around one thousand gigatons, one full teraton. But that was his base.

If he used dragon transformation now, his strength would instantly reach twenty teratons. That was equivalent to a Level 1 Martial Emperor.

"I am invincible," he breathed, the words carrying absolute conviction.

He was going crazy with euphoria, his mind spinning through possibilities and strategies and dreams of conquest. Then he heard a baby voice in his mind.

"Mas...ter."

Alex stopped immediately, his euphoria tempered by wonder. He looked at the dragon, still curled and trembling in his arms.

He telepathically asked, "Is that you?"

"Yes, master."

"So I can talk telepathically with my contracted beast? Not bad." A grin spread across his face. "Not bad at all."

"Do you have a name?" Alex asked, his voice gentle now.

"No master."

"Then from now on, you will be called Ember." The name felt right, fitting for a creature whose scales glowed like banked coals.

"Thank you, master," Ember said in a childish tone, and Alex felt something in his heart soften at the sound.

"Well, Ember. Rest up." He stroked the dragon’s head, feeling the warmth of its scales against his palm. "We will go for hunting."

Alex was now pumped up with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. With emperor-level strength at his disposal, he could hunt any saint beast easily. And once he had built up his reserves, once he had strengthened his physique and accumulated enough power, he would start hunting emperor beasts.

....

On earth,

Bam!

A terrifying sound echoed across the light domain, shaking buildings and rattling windows for thousands of kilometers.

"What is this?" people screamed, clutching doorframes and each other as the ground beneath them trembled. Mothers grabbed children, fathers ran toward danger despite their fear, and the weak hid wherever they could find shelter.

In the alliance hall, Arthur stared at his monitoring device with eyes that refused to believe what they were seeing. The energy bar of the core, that vast reservoir of power, had just lost thirty percent of its charge in a single moment.

Thirty percent. Gone.

"Something more terrifying than the dragon general appeared outside the barrier," he whispered, his voice was cracking. "If this continues, our reserve will be vanished in one month."

His communicator buzzed urgently. Julius’s face appeared, drawn and pale in a way Arthur had never seen before.

"Arthur, find out what caused this. Now."

"Yes, President." Arthur nodded and immediately began deploying every drone at his disposal, every surveillance system, every magical sensor they had positioned around the barrier. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The images began flooding in, and each one was worse than the last.

Suddenly, one of the eastern continent drones showed him something utterly horrifying. A huge monster stood in front of the barrier, its form so massive that it barely fit within the drone’s field of view. Around its feet lay the corpses of the members of other races, the beings who had been stationed at that section of the wall. They had been crushed, not killed in battle but simply obliterated by proximity.

Even through the camera, even with the safety of distance and technology between them, Arthur felt his throat drying to dust.

"What kind of monstrosity is this?" he whispered. "I have never seen it. I have never heard of anything like it."

He immediately reported it to Julius, his words tumbling over each other in their rush to escape. The monster looked like a Godzilla, like something out of the old myths, but it was real. It was real, and it was here, and it was staring at their barrier.

In the northern continent barrier, chaos reigned.

"General, all our members are killed," one dragon reported, its voice trembling despite its best efforts at control. "And the members of the other races died too. Everyone is dead."

"Who killed them? The humans cannot do that." General’s voice was calm, but those who knew him could hear the undercurrent of something dangerous beneath it.

"General, one of the beings from that island just appeared there." The reporting dragon paused, as if the next words were physically painful to speak. "It is a peak planetary being."

The general’s eyes narrowed, and for a long moment, he said nothing. Then, finally, he spoke, his words were heavy with an understanding that brought no comfort.

"They have finally started to make their moves, huh?" He turned to look out at the barrier, at the sky beyond it, at the stars that watched like indifferent gods. "Why is the trial of this planet so hard? They sent envoys from four supreme races, and also created these behemoths." His voice dropped to barely a whisper. "What is so special about the human race of this planet?"

...

In the prime sanctuary, Alex stood atop the corpse of a saint beast, his chest heaving with exertion and triumph. The creature beneath him had been massive, a serpentine horror with a hundred venomous spines, but it had fallen like all the others.

[Ding! 10000 life essence has been obtained. The ultimate physique is evolving.]

Alex closed his eyes and let the power flow through him. It was intoxicating, this feeling of growth, of becoming more with each kill. Twenty minutes passed, and when he opened his eyes again, he felt more powerful than ever before.

[Ultimate Physique]

[Level: 6]

[Life Essence: 0/18000]

[Gene Strength: 6x]

Ethan did not stop. He could not stop. Not when there was so much power to gain, so much strength to accumulate. He wanted to reach at least ten times gene strengthening before resting. He had seen Ember’s gene strength a while ago. It was ten times. That meant Ember was far more powerful than him.

It was his luck that he was able to make a contract with it.

Two days passed.

[Ultimate Physique]

[Level: 10]

[Life Essence: 0/50000]

[Gene Strength: 10x]

"Good," Alex muttered, wiping blood from his face that was not his own. He wanted to kill more, to push further, to see how far this path could take him. But then his system gave him another notification.

[Ding! Cultivation level is upgrading.]

Boom!

Instantly, he felt ten gigatons of base strength enter his body. It was not as dramatic as the boost from Ember, but it was still a massive gain.

[Name: Alex Moriarty]

[Cultivation Level: 47]

[Next break through: 6 days 23 hours]

[Gene Strength: 10x]

[Combat prowess: Level 9 Martial Saint]