Before anyone could fully process what they were seeing, Ethan had already moved.

The newly refined power inside him wasn't restrained anymore—not even a little.

Transparent lightning erupted along his arm. It first crawled soundlessly along his skin, then gathered at high speed in the air ahead, condensing into a violent flood that was almost impossible to see—

And it slammed straight into Varkharr's gate.

In the next instant, the entire doorway blew apart.

This wasn't a normal "crack and break."

The massive gate shuddered violently. The patterns on its surface lit up inch by inch—then, as the transparent lightning invaded, the structure collapsed from the inside out.

The fragments didn't even get the chance to scatter before the follow-up impact ground them into finer debris in midair.

A heaven-shaking roar rippled outward in all directions. Even the independent space behind the gate rocked hard, its edges giving off a deep, drawn-out sound of something snapping under strain.

The gate was gone.

And whatever lay beyond it was suddenly exposed.

Not long after, a figure walked out from deep inside Varkharr.

The first thing everyone heard was the weight of his footsteps.

Thud.

It sounded like it hit the ground—and like it hit everyone's chest at the same time.

Then the inner space boomed again, and thick gray energy surged outward from the depths.

The man who emerged was tall, wrapped in an abnormal fluctuation from head to toe. Most eye-catching of all was the huge white crystal set at his neck, glaringly bright against the dim aura.

That crystal wasn't quiet.

It kept releasing power nonstop. White light twisted together with death aura, forming a violently mismatched yet strangely stable energy field that sealed around his body like armor.

Ethan let out a small breath.

In the next instant, his power climbed again. Transparent thunder compressed rapidly in front of his palm, condensing into a small, blindingly bright sphere.

No stray arcs spilled from its edges. Everything was locked inside—quiet in a way that felt dangerous.

Ethan lifted his hand and slapped it forward.

The sphere flew out with almost no sound.

But the instant it neared its target, the man who'd just stepped through the broken gate changed expression sharply.

He'd sensed it.

That transparent lightning was his natural enemy.

The moment the sphere touched his body, it latched on without the slightest hesitation.

The transparent thunder didn't behave like a normal hit-and-withdraw strike. It spread rapidly across him, following the rune paths already carved into his surface—then drilling into the flesh beneath, inch by inch, sinking deeper.

He reached up to slap it off, to tear it away, to force it down.

Useless.

Once those invisible arcs attached, they clung like they'd fused to him—impossible to shake, impossible to sever. Worse, even as they spread over the surface, they kept invading inward along the rune routes, pushing into veins and muscle, igniting his whole body from the inside out.

"AAAGH—!"

A shriek tore across the air.

His face twisted. His balance collapsed and he slammed to the ground, rolling hard. Transparent lightning detonated inside him in wave after wave, ripping outward from within.

Blood mist sprayed from fresh splits in his skin. The ground around him cratered as uncontrolled energy leaked out and blasted holes into the earth.

Ethan watched—and the light in his eyes only grew brighter.

Something in him tipped fully into a violent state.

Transparent lightning poured out of him without end, taking over the surrounding space. The air warped under the pressure. Fine cracking sounds ran through the ground beneath their feet.

Ethan lifted both hands, letting that nearly invisible thunder gather above his palms. In seconds, it condensed again into a larger sphere of lightning.

This one was bigger than the last.

And heavier.

Like it wanted to crush the world on the way down.

Ethan didn't hesitate. He simply lifted his hand and slammed the shot forward.

The instant the sphere left his palm, the space around it got yanked into a clean, visible tear. It tore straight down the corridor ahead, and everything in its path—air, electric currents, that thick stink of death—got sucked in and dragged along with it.

The moment it made contact, the entire entrance zone looked like it had been hit head-on by an invisible sledgehammer. The heavy barrier and the corridor's structure blew open on the spot, punched through into a massive gap.

That wasn't a normal breach.

It was more like the entire passage had been forcibly ripped apart.

The thick, heavy gate leading into Varkharr's world shattered into fragments under that single strike, and the whole stretch of space behind it shuddered violently. Then, in the very next instant, the power that had been sealed inside that world finally—completely—erupted.

It came pouring out toward Ethan like a flood.

The force was chaotic and enormous, packed with wildly different auras tangled together. Death energy alone came in more than a dozen distinct strains.

It wasn't just layered on top of itself, either. As it surged out, those forces wrapped around each other, collided, swelled—smearing the entire region ahead with a heavy, dangerous cast. If all of it landed squarely on them, the fallout was impossible to predict.

But Ethan didn't back off.

The power inside him detonated in sync. Between his hands, another massive, transparent energy sphere condensed in an instant. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

This time, he didn't wait for it to close the distance.

He threw it first.

The sphere met that onrushing storm of mixed energy head-on.

For a split second, the whole space went quiet.

Then the transparent lightning inside the sphere blew open.

There was no blinding flash, no garish color—just power compressed to the absolute limit, suddenly unleashed and shoved outward in a brutal sweep. That domineering, almost savage force stopped the incoming death aura and the chaotic energy cold… then crushed it layer by layer.

The front line of power shattered first.

Then the next wave behind it.

In no time at all, what had been a sky-covering impact got broken apart right in front of everyone's eyes, turned into countless unsupported torrents that scattered and collapsed in every direction.

Everyone present froze.

A lot of them had been braced to take the hit head-on, but it happened too fast—too completely. They hadn't even had time to raise a hand, and the force that could've swallowed the entire area had already been ground down by Ethan alone.

Even Lily stood there, visibly stunned.

She stared at the nearly invisible strands of transparent lightning flickering around him, and for the first time, shock showed in her eyes with zero attempt to hide it.

She knew exactly what that kind of power meant. This wasn't just "enhancement," and it wasn't just "a boost." The purity of that transparent lightning was—somehow—even more refined than the thunder she could call down herself.

And beneath that terrifying purity, there was an almost bottomless tide of Infernal Primordial Power wrapped inside it.

After that brief jolt of disbelief, nobody lingered.

Ethan had blasted the entrance wide open, and the most dangerous first layer of suppression had been crushed head-on. Morale spiked straight through the roof. Everyone surged forward with obvious excitement, charging after Ethan as they stormed along the path he'd forced open—killing their way into the core region of Varkharr's domain.

But the deeper they went, the stranger the atmosphere became.

This world was huge—way bigger than expected.

Looking out, they saw independent space-structures layered upon layered, heavy and complex, each one clearly separated from the next. The scale was even more exaggerated than what they'd seen from outside. Except…

For a place this big, it was too quiet.

Aside from the guy they'd just taken down at the gate, they pushed forward and didn't see a single person.

No ambush.

No army.

Not even the barest sign of patrol routes.