The light in the Stone Golem’s eyes changed in an instant.

All that contempt, that mockery, that rock-solid confidence—washed away like it had never existed, replaced by shock it couldn’t even pretend to hide.

It didn’t hesitate anymore. It yanked every last shred of power it had left, threw its body backward, and bolted—fleeing like it had just remembered what fear felt like.

But Ethan wasn’t giving it that chance.

Boom—

A violent aura kept expanding off Ethan’s body. Transparent lightning spread across the sky like a net, tightening as it rolled in the direction the Stone Golem was trying to escape.

Wherever it passed, space warped in layered distortions. The air filled with dense, rapid-fire crackles and snapping arcs.

The Stone Golem struggled madly, trying to force its way out.

It piled all remaining power onto the outside of its body, attempting to ram through the lightning-covered zone.

But the transparent lightning expanded too fast—and it was too steady. The space ahead was already sealed shut.

It managed to lunge forward only a short distance before intersecting currents locked it in place midair. Its limbs stiffened, its motion cut dead, unable to move even an inch farther.

Ethan snorted, then slowly curled his fingers.

The energy spread through the area instantly converged forward.

Transparent lightning pressed down in layers, like countless invisible chains cinching tight at the same time—blanketing the space and trapping the Stone Golem at the very center.

The air in that region collapsed first. Arcs jumped between cracks in space, ripping out a chain of shrill detonations. Even the Stone Golem’s massive stone body was compressed inward little by little, forced to shrink under the pressure.

Ethan hung in the air, staring down at it with cold eyes.

"To me, you’re nothing but a third-rate rock monster," he said—not loud, but heavy enough to make the surrounding roar dip lower. "You really thought that just because you can use runes, and you’ve stolen this world’s primal source, you could stand against me? Keep dreaming."

As his words fell, the power inside him surged again.

Transparent lightning gathered from his shoulders, his back, his arms, his palm—everything compressing into his right hand.

The ball of lightning shrank to something tiny, but inside it, the vibration went berserk. Fine threads of electricity kept spitting off its edges, slicing the air in front of his hand into a trembling distortion.

Ethan didn’t give the Stone Golem even a breath of space.

He lifted his hand and slammed it down.

Bang!

The extremely compressed transparent lightning exploded from his palm like a spear being hammered into place, punching straight through the center of the Stone Golem’s chest.

The black gemstone embedded there—the one that had been releasing Primordial Death Energy and a destruction aura nonstop—shuddered violently. Then cracks crawled across its surface.

Crack. Crack-crack.

Fractures spread one after another until they webbed the entire gem.

The Stone Golem’s body locked up with it. In that instant, it looked like it had been nailed in midair—limbs frozen, and even the energy that had been boiling moments ago stuttering into a brief, broken gap.

Ethan moved even faster.

His figure flickered, and he was suddenly right in front of it.

At this distance, the yellow energy stone hidden in its forehead looked even more insignificant—less noticeable than the natural grooves in its rocky surface.

Ethan didn’t hesitate for even half a beat. He reached up and clamped down on it, five fingers hooking the edge with surgical precision, then yanked.

He tore the energy stone out by force.

The moment it hit his hand, Ethan’s palm dipped with the weight—then the surge inside it rattled up his arm, making his fingers twitch.

This wasn’t the mixed, muddy death-and-destruction fluctuation from the black chest gem.

It was purer. Denser.

A thick, concentrated Primordial Force of heaven and earth, flowing at high speed inside the stone, pressurizing the air around it until it trembled faintly.

Ethan lowered his gaze to the energy core in his palm, and for the first time, something in his eyes shifted—clean, unmistakable.

He honestly hadn’t expected that something this pure could still exist in the world.

And with its true core ripped out, the Stone Golem finally couldn’t hold on anymore.

Its massive body sank as if the support had been cut out from under it. Then the rocky structure covering it began to collapse fast.

Huge chunks peeled off and fell—yet instead of slamming down with the heavy crash you’d expect, they broke apart midair in layers. By the time they reached the ground, all that remained was a scatter of small stones raining down.

The fight ended even faster than anyone had imagined.

Ethan didn’t waste a second. He drove the energy core straight into his body with a single slap.

The instant stone met flesh, a天地-thick surge of Primordial Force exploded inside him—so dense it felt almost physical. It raced through his meridians and bones like a flood that had finally found a channel.

His transparent lightning erupted with it, flaring behind his back and stretching outward—until it condensed into a pair of huge, sharply defined lightning wings.

Those wings were made entirely of transparent electric light. Their edges were knife-sharp, and inside them countless tiny currents whipped around at insane speed. When the wings spread, waves of vibration rippled through space in stacked layers, sweeping even the dust out of the air.

Ethan lifted his eyes toward the distance, his tone flat, like he was stating something too obvious to argue with.

"Varkharr’s nothing special."

He didn’t raise his voice, but the order landed like iron.

"Spread out. Fight independently. If you see an enemy, kill them all. No mercy. No holding back."

The moment the command fell, the Emerald Castle army’s momentum ignited.

The people who’d been right behind him all looked up at once, battle intent boiling out of their eyes.

Even a monster like that Stone Golem had been forcibly suppressed and slaughtered by Ethan. The last thread of hesitation in their hearts tore clean through.

Nobody wavered.

The formation split on the spot, streams of fighters exploding outward in every direction.

Footsteps, shouts, the boom of weapons and energy—within moments, the sounds braided together across the space, pounding until the earth itself echoed.

Ethan didn’t stop.

He moved forward with Queen Seraphine at his side, cutting through shattered rocklands and leftover energy storms. Before long, the scenery ahead changed.

A wasteland—an unnervingly strange one.

From a distance, there was nothing especially eye-catching. No towering structures. No eerie light pillars. The terrain was almost too flat, almost ordinary.

But the closer they got, the more wrong it felt. The energy between heaven and earth was so thick it was nearly viscous. In a place like this, life should’ve been everywhere. Even the lowest-grade plants should’ve been able to take root.

Yet there was nothing.

The ground was pale and cracked. When the wind blew, it lifted only fine dust.

As far as the eye could see, it was barren—like even the idea of "living" had been drained away.

Farther out, bones were scattered across the land, stark white, half-buried in gray dirt and broken stone. They didn’t just make the wasteland feel empty.

They made it feel dead—quiet in a way that didn’t belong.