Yamato Archipelago... 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

By the time Ethan and the others rode their Flamebirds into the airspace near the Yamato islands, they could already see it from a distance—clusters of red figures moving all over the interior.

Ethan’s eyes lit up.

"They really did come out."

"Don’t rush in," Ethan said. "Circle once first. Get a look."

So the whole group stayed mounted and swept around the area in a wide loop. By the time they finished, Ethan had a rough read on things.

"Judging by the numbers... most of them are out."

"And..." His voice tightened a little. "They probably came out before the mysterious energy spiked. These bastards leveled up like crazy."

"How crazy?" everyone asked, staring at him.

"Lowest is Tier 19. Highest is Tier 22—and there are a lot of Tier 22s. Not sure if there are any Tier 23s. I haven’t seen one yet."

"Ah... what...?"

"With that kind of power... can we even fight them?" The group’s confidence wobbled.

Right now, on their side, Ethan was the only Tier 22. The rest of the Fallen Star Squad were Tier 21.

In the Fallen Star Guard, ten thousand were Tier 20. The other ten thousand had only just reached Tier 18.

Even the twenty thousand Flamebirds were only Tier 18 to Tier 20. Their leader, Ember, was Tier 21—and compared to the enemy, that gap wasn’t small.

"We fight," Ethan said flatly. "We have to. This batch of Infernals is the best shortcut we’ve got if we want to boost our strength fast."

He kept going, voice steady as he laid it out. "I watched them from a distance. Same as before—they live by tribes. Each tribe is anywhere from a few tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand."

"But the Yamato Archipelago is way smaller than their original world. Their tribes are packed in close. Once we start something, the other tribes will probably come running immediately. If they surround us, it’ll get ugly."

He glanced out toward the open water. "Our only real advantage is that we can fly. We can pull toward the sea. They won’t dare chase us out there."

"We can hit them and pull back."

"Boss, just tell us how to do it," someone said. "With you here, the thinking part isn’t our job."

Ethan nodded once. "Then follow me."

He swung up onto Ember and headed for the sharp, pointed end of the island chain.

When they’d circled earlier, Ethan had spotted a tribe there—around thirty to forty thousand. More isolated than most.

With twenty thousand Fallen Star Guard plus twenty thousand Flamebirds, their numbers weren’t the problem.

Power was.

Still... they had ten thousand Tier 20 Guards. They had the Squad. They had Dopey and Rocky. Their top-end strength wasn’t weak. If they picked the angle right, they could gamble.

Right now, they needed every opening they could get to grow stronger. Which meant it was time to use their so-called trump cards.

Before long, they were hovering above the ocean, up in the cloud layer.

"You stay here," Ethan said. "I’m going in to drop Dopey and Rocky. Once everything down there’s in chaos, you fly in and smash them before they can react."

"Got it." Everyone nodded.

Ethan pulled out two daggers, triggered telekinetic flight, and shot toward the Infernal tribe.

He hadn’t even gotten close before they spotted him.

Shouts exploded across the camp. An endless wave of Infernals surged toward him.

In an instant, the sky turned red—countless fireballs screaming up at Ethan like a storm.

From the look of it... they recognized him.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have started with fire the second he showed his face.

Ethan blinked through the incoming fire with a clean Teleportation, vanishing again and again until his silhouette snapped into place directly above the Infernal mob.

Then—two figures appeared out of nowhere and dropped straight down.

The moment they hit the ground, Dopey became a blur, weaving through the Infernals like a knife through cloth. Everywhere it passed, bodies burst into red mist.

Rocky, though—Rocky was even worse for them in a brawl like this.

Meteors screamed down from the sky, slamming into the crowd and flattening Infernals into meat paste.

From the ground, jagged spikes erupted in rows, impaling them one after another—like grotesque kebabs strung on stone.

The Infernals roared, the sound turning feral. More and more of them surged toward the two intruders, trying to drown them in numbers.

It didn’t matter.

Against two soulless thralls, a bigger crowd was just... more to kill.

The more that came, the faster they died.

The tribe chief’s face twisted with shock. He clearly hadn’t expected anything this terrifying.

But he wasn’t stupid, either. A heartbeat later, he sensed it—the two monsters had no soul fluctuations at all. Thralls. Puppet tools.

His gaze snapped up to the sky and locked onto Ethan.

With a bellow, he called the fire. Flames from every direction converged, a storm of blazing attacks ripping toward Ethan’s position.

Ethan didn’t panic. He teleported down in a flash and landed hard on the ground.

A shield condensed from earth energy wrapped around him like a shell.

Stoneborn’s strongest defensive skill—

Earth Ward.

Dopey and Rocky didn’t need to defend at all in this kind of fight, so Ethan had Rocky cast Earth Ward on him instead.

There was a catch, though. Earth Ward needed its user to stay grounded so it could continuously draw reinforcement from earth energy. That was why Ethan had to teleport down.

Fireballs, flame lances, burning arcs—everything smashed into the ward.

Nothing rippled. Nothing even shook.

Earth Ward’s defense was even stronger than Garrick’s protective dome.

And honestly, the reason was simple: the caster.

An Earth Ward released by Rocky—at the peak of Tier 29—wasn’t something a bunch of Tier 21 and Tier 22 Infernals could crack, no matter how hard they tried.

With his survival locked in, Ethan stopped playing defense and started harvesting.

Daggers streamed out of his spatial storage ring in a steady flow, whipping into the air before shooting forward like a flock of metal birds.

Fast—absurdly fast.

And precise to the point of cruelty.

Every single blade punched straight through an Infernal’s skull.

After a few minutes, the remaining Infernals finally understood the problem.

They couldn’t touch these three.

The tribe chief roared again, and what was left of the tribe broke—turning and sprinting for the distance in a ragged tide.

That was when the sky above them suddenly filled with Flamebirds.

A dense, sweeping mass of wings dove down and tore into the fleeing Infernals.

And then figures started dropping from their backs—Fallen Star Guard hitting the ground at a run. Skills detonated everywhere, layer after layer of attacks raining down and swallowing the stragglers.

The ambush hit so fast the already-panicked Infernals didn’t even have time to process it. Before they could reorganize, they’d already lost over half.

The survivors had no interest in fighting anymore. All that was left in their eyes was the desperate need to live.

Too bad.

Against Fallen Star Guard and Flamebirds that outnumbered them, their "escape" was never going to be more than a fantasy.

It didn’t take long. Under the tightening encirclement, the last Infernals were cut down where they ran.

"Clean up fast! Dig out the crystal cores—ignore the bodies for now!" Ethan barked.

He’d already spotted it: plenty of red figures in the distance, racing this way.

With twenty thousand people, extracting crystal cores was easy work. Efficient. Brutal.

Thirty to forty thousand cores were harvested in no time. The moment they were done, everyone vaulted back onto the Flamebirds and lifted off, peeling away from the battlefield.

Not long after they disappeared, a massive wave of Infernals arrived.

They took in the wreckage—the cratered ground, the gore, the scattered remains—and howled at the retreating silhouettes shrinking over the horizon.

But that was all they could do.

Ahead was the open sea, and they couldn’t cross it.

Forget the fact that they feared water by nature—there were sea monsters out there that would tear them apart even faster than Ethan had.

In the end, the furious horde could only snarl and rage a little longer... then turn back the way they’d come.