"What are you?"

Ethan stared at him and threw out the question first, testing the water.

The man across from him looked arrogantly down his nose, the contempt in his eyes completely undisguised.

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he lifted his palm.

The moment he did, violent energy erupted from inside him, rushing down his arm into his hand. Then, high in the air, it stretched and expanded, condensing into a massive dragon phantom.

The shadowy dragon coiled above his head, its outline thick and heavy, deathly aura wrapped around it. Just the act of forming it made the surrounding space shudder in waves.

"I'm Draevor," he finally said, voice low and icy. "Varkharr's Fourth Warlord—Draevor."

As he spoke, his gaze never left Ethan.

"My brother, Dravok, led an army here not long ago."

Above him, the dragon phantom swayed slowly. Dark energy kept spilling from the edges of its maw and claws.

"But he's gone."

A faint curve tugged at Draevor's mouth—so light it almost counted as polite.

"Have you seen him?"

The question sounded calm, but the power gathering in his palm didn't soften at all.

That ball of energy kept compressing in his hand. Black light churned inside, its edges warping as if it could slip free and smash down at any moment. If it actually landed, the result wouldn't be something you shrugged off.

Ethan was about to speak when the air beside him brightened, just a touch.

Queen Seraphine arrived.

She appeared faster than sound. The moment her feet settled in place, sacred Light Force was already spreading outward from her.

Golden-white radiance flowed along the edges of her robes, then rapidly expanded into a broad curtain of light that pressed forward.

Draevor's newly formed dragon phantom had barely spread its wings before that force pushed down from above, forcing it lower—its head dipping visibly.

Seraphine stood in front of Ethan, her voice cool and flat.

"Of course we've seen your brother."

Her eyes didn't ripple with emotion.

"But he went too far. He tried to seize our world."

As she spoke, Light Force continued to advance, tearing open the death aura in the air piece by piece.

"So I had no choice…"

"…but to erase him completely."

When the last words fell, the already taut atmosphere in the sky dropped another degree—like an invisible weight tightening.

The fake politeness on Draevor's face vanished.

His power exploded.

The deathly aura that had been coiled around him surged all at once, like a deep-sea current suddenly stirred into a violent whirlpool. It poured in from all directions, flooding back into him.

The dragon phantom that had been pressed down shuddered and surged again, and the whole sky rumbled with a heavy, muffled roar.

At the same time, an energy sphere appeared in his hand—black light and a gray-white death mist twisting together inside it, packing tighter and tighter.

"You people really have a death wish," Draevor said, all warmth gone.

"To dare oppose Varkharr."

His fingers closed. The power inside the sphere compressed to its limit.

"Since my brother died here…"

"…every last one of you is going to be buried with him."

He raised his arm and hurled the sphere.

Once it left his hand, it didn't drop in a straight line. It carved a bleak arc through the air, dragging a tide of death aura behind it—swallowing the surrounding light as it went.

It lunged straight for Queen Seraphine. As it closed in, it swelled rapidly, strange energy detonating from within in expanding rings—

Until it fully wrapped her inside.

But there wasn't a flicker of fear on Seraphine's face.

She didn't even lean back. She simply stood her ground and slowly lifted a hand.

Palm forward.

The next instant, sacred Light Force erupted out of her completely.

It wasn't a single beam of light.

It was a tide—holy power surging out in sheets.

Golden-white radiance spilled from her palm, slicing into the strange energy wrapping in around her, then grinding outward as it advanced. The death aura that had been trying to swallow her was torn apart on contact, evaporating like layers of black fog burned through by blistering heat—no chance to re-form, not even for a heartbeat.

And what was worse…

The scattered, drifting energies between heaven and earth were pulled in at the same time.

Power from every direction converged as if it had sensed a true sovereign. It streamed toward Seraphine, gathering around her position, feeding into her hand—turning into heavier and heavier suppression, layer stacked on layer, all of it pressing down on Draevor.

For the first time, Draevor's expression changed.

He clearly felt something was wrong. His own power surged upward, trying to force a stand.

But the Light Force was already a step ahead.

It pierced through the deathly defense on his skin like a set of blazing, razor-edged streams, driving straight into his body.

Then the breakdown began.

First, fine cracks spidered across the muscle of his arm. Then they climbed—fast—into his chest, his shoulder, his throat, one spot after another splitting open.

It wasn't a shattering from external impact.

It was decomposition from the inside out—Light Force unmaking him at the core. Thick waves of death aura still writhed and tried to surge outward, but it couldn't stop that holy advance.

Before long, Draevor was reduced to ruin.

He dropped his gaze and looked at his body as it continued to collapse. His pupils shrank hard, and for the first time, real, naked shock broke into his voice.

"That's impossible!"

He stared at Queen Seraphine like he'd lost the ability to process what he was seeing, his tone cracking. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"How can anyone in this world control Light Force this pure?"

The flesh over his chest was still being dissolved so quickly that even speaking came out strained, sluggish.

"Who are you?" His voice jumped again, sharp with panic. "Are you… the descendant of the Goddess of Light?"

Seraphine didn't answer.

She simply kept releasing power.

The Light Force grew brighter—and heavier—like a sacred flood falling from the sky, pinning Draevor inside it.

The last layers of death aura on his body peeled apart one after another. His outline blurred, then vanished, his form breaking down inside that radiance until there was nothing left.

A moment later, he was ash.

The wind in the high sky caught it and carried it off, leaving not a single intact trace behind.

But the battle didn't end.

The instant his body dispersed, a violent fluctuation ripped free from within that drifting ash.

It wasn't leftover energy.

It was Draevor's Soulforce.

Even with his flesh destroyed to this extent, his Soulforce was still forcing itself to struggle—trying to break out of the Light Force and escape.