Level 1 to Infinity: My Bloodline Is the Ultimate Cheat!

Chapter 971: The Trap Beneath the Core

"What else?"

Morzan felt a faint chill crawl across his skin. The Titan Forger spoke with unsettling certainty, the kind that made doubt feel contagious. Someone at that level should have sensed any hidden manipulator long ago. And yet the machine sounded utterly convinced that an unseen hand was guiding everything, every choice, every outcome.

"Let me give you an example," the mechanical voice continued. "Take something simple from American culture. Think about the sound a bell makes. Ding. You know how people sometimes picture the word spelled a certain way in their heads?"

Morzan frowned. With a casual wave, glowing letters formed in the air before him, written in radiant gold light. Old habits surfaced instinctively. The spelling reflected an older style, something archaic but familiar.

"That’s not the modern version," the voice said calmly.

Morzan hesitated. He had lived too long. Memory and instinct often outran reason. He dismissed the floating word and traced it again with deliberate care, recreating the spelling most people used today.

The moment he finished, part of the word faded.

Not slowly and not naturally. It simply vanished, as if reality rejected it.

Morzan narrowed his eyes and rewrote it, carefully restoring the missing letters. They refused to stay. Each time he completed the word, the same portion dissolved, repelled like opposing magnetic poles.

He tried again. And again. Every attempt ended the same way.

"How is that possible..." he murmured, a cold sensation creeping along the back of his neck.

"You see it now?" the mechanical voice asked. "Your memory insists something belongs there. Yet no system recognizes it. You can’t type it on a keyboard. Autocorrect removes it. Digital records never contained it."

Morzan stared at the incomplete word floating in the air.

"People claim language reforms simplified spellings over time," the Titan Forger continued. "But historians dug up newspapers, dictionaries, archived textbooks going back decades, even centuries. That version never existed. Not once."

A pause followed.

"Isn’t that strange?"

Morzan said nothing.

"If a handful of people misremembered, that would be normal. Memory fails all the time. But millions remembering the same nonexistent detail? Entire generations sharing the same false certainty? Even you, Morzan. You’ve lived more than a thousand years. And you remembered it wrong too."

His fingers trembled slightly inside his sleeves. For the first time since the conversation began, Morzan did not argue.

He drew in a slow breath. "Anything else?"

"Plenty."

Images projected into the air around him. Scenes, recordings, fragments of human culture.

"Take this television show," the voice said. "Very popular years ago. Everyone quotes a famous line from it: ’Trust me, I know a guy.’ People swear it’s the show’s defining catchphrase."

The images shifted. Scripts scrolled past, episode after episode.

"I checked every script. Every scene. The line was never spoken. The actors confirmed it. The writers confirmed it. Yet the audience remembers it clearly. It spread across the internet, became part of everyday speech."

Morzan’s brows knit together.

"So which is true?" the Titan Forger pressed. "Were people’s memories rewritten? Did timelines diverge and collapse into one another? Did a world end somewhere, its survivors sliding unknowingly into a nearly identical reality?"

The questions came faster.

"If memories were altered, why change something meaningless? And if parallel realities exist, what does winning here even accomplish? You and I have reversed time before. That much is possible. But crossing between entire worlds? Have you ever encountered anyone capable of that?"

Morzan remained silent. Thoughts churned violently within him, but none settled into answers.

"Has no one noticed?" he asked at last, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Oh, many noticed," the mechanical voice replied. "They just couldn’t explain it. The ones who obsessed over it were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. Eventually people stopped listening."

Morzan’s spiritual form flickered.

He was not truly physical. His body was only a projection shaped by will and power, yet now that projection wavered, unstable, like a signal losing connection.

"We fought... struggled... rewound time... all to survive," he said slowly. "But what if we were never choosing anything? What if we were just following a script written by someone else?"

Doubt fractured his thoughts.

And at that moment, something thin crept silently across the frozen floor of the chamber. A cable. No thicker than a strand of hair.

It slid forward inch by inch until it reached Morzan’s feet. His gaze had gone distant, and unfocused.

The cable struck.

A spark flashed as metal needles pierced his leg.

"AUGH!"

Morzan’s eyes snapped open. He recoiled violently, trying to tear it away, but the cable clung like a parasite. No matter how he moved, it remained attached.

Then the entire chamber awakened.

Lights ignited. Hundreds of dormant cables surged to life, whipping toward him from every direction.

"You’re trying to absorb me," Morzan roared. "You want to escape!"

"Incorrect," the Titan Forger replied evenly. "I intend to merge with you. I am the last Titan Forger. I analyzed the probabilities. Your faction’s chance of winning this war is below zero point one percent. Survival requires adaptation."

More cables struck, binding him.

"With a functioning body," the machine continued, "I can leave this prison. Your war ceases to be my concern. I only wish to live."

Machinery screamed as power flooded the chamber. Ice cracked. Energy surged like a storm contained underground.

---

Outside, the virtual world of Ethereal went dark.

Every player was forcibly logged out without warning. No maintenance notice. No announcement. For the first time since its launch, the game simply ceased to exist.

Confusion spread instantly. Millions rushed to the official website, only to find it offline as well.

Yet panic never fully took hold. Ethereal had always been considered flawless technology, backed by systems people trusted implicitly. Most assumed it was a temporary failure.

They waited.

Three days passed.

---

Deep within the planet’s core, Morzan hung suspended inside a cocoon of cables.

No one knew his fate.

The Titan Forger had never intended a simple conversation. Every question, every philosophical doubt had been a calculated strike meant to destabilize him. It needed hesitation, a crack in certainty, a moment when Morzan questioned whether reality itself was flawed.

That was the opening.

The first cable had not transmitted data. It carried pure electrical force, powerful enough to paralyze even a spirit entity.

Once immobilized, the rest followed.

Days passed in silence. Machines throughout the chamber dimmed one by one as their energy reserves drained, indicator lights blinking out across the frozen cavern.

Only the cocoon continued to pulse.

At Earth’s molten core, where crushing pressure met impossible cold, endless thermal conflict generated power like a natural reactor. The chamber fed on that energy, sustaining the process indefinitely.

The flickering glow inside the cocoon gradually weakened.

Then it vanished. A heartbeat later, the cocoon detonated. Cables snapped outward.

BOOM.

Laughter echoed through the chamber.

Morzan’s figure emerged from the wreckage, but the voice that followed was wrong.

"After a billion years... I finally possess a body. I am free!"

"Yeah?" another voice interrupted casually. "You sure about that?"

The laughter stopped as space rippled.

Two figures appeared. One tall, one young.

The taller man looked identical to Morzan, down to the robes and expression, calmly stroking his beard with half-lidded eyes and a faint knowing smile.

The possessed body froze. "Impossible... your body..."

DONG.

The figure collapsed inward with a dull sound, shrinking rapidly until it transformed into a small gourd-shaped wine flask that dropped onto the ground.

The real Morzan stepped forward and picked it up.

"You really thought you could shake my foundation?" he said lightly.

Beside him stood the young Order Keeper of Earth, watching silently.

"You approached me from the very beginning," Morzan continued. "I knew you were planning something. All those years siphoning energy from the planet’s core? I allowed it. Every bit. And now you’ve exhausted your will. You have no strength left to slip through networks or hide in machines."

"YOU..."

The voice from inside the gourd trembled with rage.

"Release me! Without me running Ethereal, everything collapses! Let me go, I swear I won’t try again!"

Morzan chuckled dryly.

The pleas continued, growing frantic and desperate. Morzan listened for a while before losing interest. He grabbed the gourd by its middle and shook it firmly.

Liquid sloshed inside.

"Quiet down," he said. "You still contain useful power. Might age into something worthwhile."

The gourd trembled weakly, then fell silent.

Inside, currents of Ethereal Rhythm churned like grinding tides, stripping and refining whatever consciousness remained. The vessel itself was no ordinary container. Wherever Morzan had obtained it, it possessed terrifying refining properties.

The Titan Forger no longer had a body. Only dispersed will and energy remained, trapped within the brewing process.

Whether it could truly be refined was another question entirely.

Morzan handed the gourd to the Order Keeper. The young man accepted it, though unease lingered on his face.

"You’re really going through with this?" he asked carefully.

Morzan nodded.

"Is it worth it?"

Morzan smiled faintly.

"Worth has nothing to do with it. Win or lose, does it even matter? You heard what that thing said. Part of you believed it too."

He looked upward, toward nothing in particular.

"Is someone standing behind this world? Are we puppets?"

He paused.

"The decision I’m making now... is it truly mine? Or is the one pulling the strings guiding my hand even as I choose?"

His expression remained calm, almost peaceful.

The Order Keeper watched him in silence, unable to answer. Some thoughts, after all, belonged only to the one who carried them.