Once Ethan made his decision, he didn’t linger.

He immediately issued the order for Emerald Castle’s entire army to withdraw.

They’d reinforced that dimensional passage long ago—solid enough that even massive fleets could pass through it. Now it finally paid off. As the command spread, the troops tightened formation and pulled back in waves, retreating in large groups along the now-stabilized corridor.

It didn’t take long.

The entire army successfully crossed the dimensional space.

When they reappeared, they were already back near Emerald Castle.

Ethan’s emotions were still riding the post-battle high.

The haul from that fight had blown past anything he’d expected. On Emerald Castle’s side, nearly everyone was holding a dozen or more powerful energy cores. In their palms, the cores gave off steady, weighty pulses, faintly resonating with one another until even the air around them felt heavier.

Once all that energy was put to use, the power they could unleash would shove the entire war into a new tier.

Ethan stepped down from the ship, about to head back to the main city—when he suddenly stopped.

Up in the sky beyond Emerald Castle’s perimeter, there was an extra figure.

The man hovered there in silence, tall enough it felt like he was taking up the whole sky. Two sharp horns extended from his head, dark red patterns crawling up from the roots. Energy kept spilling from the tips in ripples, pushing the air outward like rings on water.

Space itself trembled faintly under that presence. Even the clouds in the distance were being pressed back, drifting away as if they couldn’t bear the weight.

Ethan’s brow tightened.

The other man hadn’t approached. He hadn’t launched an attack.

But the way he held position—staying outside, sealing the approach—was obvious enough.

He’d come to hit Emerald Castle.

Ethan’s power reacted instantly.

White arcs raced down his arms, then gathered beneath his feet into a band of light that lifted him up. A heartbeat later, Ethan rose into the air and faced the figure from afar, his gaze locked on him.

"Who are you?" Ethan called, voice cutting through the air. "What are you doing here?"

The man’s expression was proud to the point of arrogance. He didn’t even bother to shift his eyes. His attention stayed on Emerald Castle, coldly measuring it like a stash of resources.

"I’m from Varkharr," he said, voice low and steady. "Third Warlord Dravok."

The moment the name landed, his energy began to spread. The air sank slightly under the pressure, and fine cracks spidered along the edges of space.

"My mission is to find enough energy cores," he continued. "The energy density here is decent—yet it’s occupied by a pack of low-grade creatures."

Only then did his gaze tilt down to Ethan.

"How pathetic."

He didn’t pause.

"I’m giving you two choices."

"Either hand over your energy ore and energy cores..."

"Or I kill you all and take them myself."

As the last line fell, power gathered in his palm. Dark red ripples rolled outward, and a thin spatial slit tore open nearby. The edges of the rift crumbled—then stitched themselves back together—over and over, as if the space itself was being pushed to its limit.

Ethan let out a cold snort.

His power detonated.

He’d only just returned, and his fused state with Lily, Idra, Auri, and Nysera still hadn’t been released. Multiple energies continued to hum in stable resonance inside him. The instant he let it out, white lightning spread like a curtain of light, blanketing the sky.

Arcs linked to arcs, forming a dense web overhead that pressed down on Dravok’s aura head-on.

"Before you showed up, plenty of people said the same thing," Ethan said evenly.

"Too bad they all stayed at Emerald Castle."

"Not even ash left."

The words hit like a lit fuse.

Dravok’s presence surged.

In that instant, he released everything. Dark red energy expanded upward, condensing into a massive phantom behind him.

It matched his outline perfectly—only the horns were even larger. Energy flowed through the phantom’s body in heavy currents, warping the space around it into visible bends.

Just a sliver of leakage tore multiple cracks through the sky.

Ethan’s gaze sharpened.

White lightning gathered along his arm, compressing forward—then a tightly condensed beam of thunder shot from his palm. It tore through the air with a long, thin tail of light, aimed straight at the phantom on Dravok’s chest.

The two forces collided head-on in midair.

The moment they touched, the light was swallowed whole.

Then the shockwave blew outward. Space buckled into layered folds, and the distant cloudbank was ripped into shredded fragments.

Violent energy hammered back and forth between sky and earth.

Ethan’s heart sank a fraction.

His overall strength had already stabilized at Tier 35—complete, steady, under control. And yet Dravok could meet him head-on without even showing a clear retreat.

He adjusted his breathing, then slid back half a step.

In the next instant, another power inside him stirred.

Energy surged together in front of him, light stacking over light, and a massive phantom beast gradually took shape in the air. Its outline was pure energy, but inside it flowed a heavy, crushing pressure—

Power extracted from the Primal Sovereign Beast.

The moment the phantom beast finished forming, its aura slammed down.

It took one step forward.

The entire space shook.

The energy body rammed straight into Dravok’s phantom, the impact line driving through from the front and forcibly pushing Dravok’s power backward. Ripples burst across the surface of that phantom, and even Dravok himself was forced to retreat.

Dravok’s pupils contracted sharply.

He didn’t keep trying to tank it. His hand snapped to his chest, and from inside his armor he pulled out a blood-red gem.

The instant it appeared, the space around him changed.

A warped pulse spilled from the gem’s core—clearly spatial in nature, but threaded through with corrosive energy. The two attributes twisted and rotated around the gem, interlocking into an unstable layered structure.

The air started to corrode, darkening at the edges.

Space stretched at the same time.

Ethan instinctively retreated several steps.

Dravok raised his hand, the gem floating above his palm.

Both forces poured into his body, then gathered again in his hand—condensing into a transparent sphere of energy. Inside it, warped patterns kept surfacing and vanishing as spatial power and corrosion compressed together.

He swung his arm forward.

The sphere launched like a thrown star.

It drove in a straight line, tearing a channel through the air as the space around it fractured nonstop. As it advanced, the energy inside continued to swell, and the pressure radius expanded rapidly.