Ethan took two slow steps forward and looked down at the man pinned to the ground, open ridicule curling at the corner of his mouth.

"I thought Varkharr was supposed to be impressive," he said. "Didn’t expect everyone here to be this weak."

Even as he spoke, the lightning in his hand kept pressing down. Transparent arcs crawled over the man’s outline, and every time one snapped, the ground split a little wider beneath him.

"From the moment I stepped in, I’ve already killed several of your ’generals,’" Ethan went on lightly, like he was talking about the weather. "So how about it? Why don’t you gather everyone you’ve got and we’ll have a final battle?"

The man’s face drained.

The ferocity from earlier was gone—wiped clean—leaving only raw panic he couldn’t hide.

More than anyone, he understood he hadn’t lost to a simple head-on clash. The thing that froze his blood was the woman standing beside Ethan.

That Divine Power—so thick it felt impossible to breathe through—was Varkharr’s absolute bane.

His lips moved like he was about to speak.

But before a sound could come out, the transparent lightning in Ethan’s hand condensed again.

This time it wasn’t aimed at his chest. Not his abdomen.

It locked onto his head.

The lightning, compressed to the limit, trembled in Ethan’s palm with a shrill whine, bleaching the surrounding light until the air itself looked pale.

Then Ethan brought his hand down.

Bang!

The bolt drilled straight through. The instant it touched, the man’s head exploded.

No stalemate. No resistance. Transparent lightning detonated that entire area in a single, brutal burst. The leftover energy crawled along the ground, scorching gray dust and broken stone into blackened streaks.

That was the end of the fight.

Ethan clapped his hands together as if he’d just dusted something off, then straightened up. The tension in his face eased noticeably.

Queen Seraphine glanced at him, her brows knitting faintly.

"Didn’t you just say you wanted a final battle with them?" Her voice was still cool, still even. "If you killed him, how is he supposed to go back and report?"

Ethan spread his hands, and there was even a trace of amusement in his expression.

"I changed my mind," he said shamelessly. "If they really did gather everyone, we’d be the ones in danger."

Queen Seraphine went quiet for a beat.

She stared at him like her temple might’ve twitched, her expression turning complicated—but in the end she didn’t argue. She only shifted her gaze toward a small mountain not far away.

In the next instant, her power burst outward.

Divine Power condensed behind her in a rush. Brilliant golden light stretched upward, and within that glow, a massive phoenix phantom took shape between heaven and earth.

It spread its wings, lightflames burning along its outline. The moment it appeared, the surrounding air started to quake under the pressure.

Queen Seraphine lifted a hand and pointed.

The giant phoenix phantom dove, dragging a searing golden tail straight into the mountain.

BOOM—

The whole mountain blew apart on impact. Rock and soil were thrown into the sky, and a huge gash tore from the mountainside all the way down to its base.

A rain of rubble crashed down. The dust hadn’t even had time to clear when more than a dozen figures slowly emerged from inside.

They lined up in a row, hovering in midair.

Every single one of them radiated terrifying power. The air currents around their bodies shuddered nonstop—none of them were ordinary.

But the strange part was... even after being exposed right in front of their enemies, they didn’t make a move.

They didn’t charge.

They didn’t form a formation.

They just hung there, perfectly still.

And the eyes of every one of them were dull—blank, like something had hollowed them out.

Ethan’s brow furrowed hard at the sight.

All the way in, he’d kept the system running—yet even the system hadn’t detected anyone hiding inside that ridge.

Queen Seraphine had seen through it at a glance. That alone sent another flicker of surprise through him.

But what he couldn’t wrap his head around was their reaction.

The enemy was already right in front of them, and those people still didn’t move. It was like they were waiting for something... or like the idea of attacking on their own simply didn’t exist.

While that question was still forming in Ethan’s mind, an extremely strange fluctuation swept through the world.

It wasn’t just wind.

It felt more like a storm carrying some special kind of force—arriving too fast, spanning too wide. The instant it appeared, the air above the wasteland was completely churned into chaos.

Gray-white dust, loose stone, even chunks of the shattered mountain that hadn’t finished falling—everything got caught up and dragged along, surging in a sky-covering wave toward the broken hill.

Humm!

Rumble—!

Those dozen-plus figures seemed to fear that storm on a near-instinctive level.

The moment it appeared, their dull eyes finally changed. Their bodies moved all at once.

Power erupted from them without restraint. Their energies compressed tight around their bodies, stacking in layers to form a thick defensive barrier.

It was incredibly dense. Light streamed across its surface in constant motion—obviously a full-strength defense born from sheer survival pressure.

But the strange storm hit... and the barrier lasted only a heartbeat.

First, the outermost layer was torn open.

Then the entire shield started to quake violently—before it shattered in大片, like it had been carved apart by countless invisible blades at the same time. In moments, every last bit of their defense was blasted into fragments.

And then it was their bodies.

When the storm swept through, it left no room, no mercy.

The instant it touched them, flesh began to rupture. Pieces tore away, shredded and carried off. In a blink, they’d become a spray of blood and meat scattered across the air—then completely churned into nothing by that violent force.

In the end, only one remained—someone with the toughest physical body—still standing there.

Ethan’s eyes locked.

By all logic, this should’ve been Varkharr’s world.

They should’ve been able to draw on its energy, even borrow the world’s primal source to empower themselves. But what was happening in front of him was the exact opposite.

This world was hiding a danger designed specifically for them.

And it wasn’t rumor. It wasn’t theory.

It was right here.

Queen Seraphine watched the zone the storm had shredded, her expression barely changing—as if this simply confirmed something she’d already suspected.

She didn’t waste time. She lifted her hand and condensed a golden energy sphere in her palm.

At first it was only fist-sized, but dazzling gold light kept spilling from its surface.

As Divine Power continued pouring in, the power inside compressed at terrifying speed, packing into an extremely dense core until rings of ripples shuddered through the surrounding space.