Ethan finally let out a slow breath.

If they’d gone head-on, with the raw power that bull had just shown, forcing it into submission would’ve been nearly impossible. But now that Queen Seraphine had shattered its nerve in one move, the situation was naturally a lot simpler.

Even so, Ethan’s expression didn’t soften as he looked into its eyes.

Those eyes were begging on the surface—but deep down, murderous intent still churned, thick enough to taste. That wasn’t something that faded in a few seconds, and it wasn’t something the word slave could erase. Keeping a creature like that around would be asking for trouble later.

Ethan exhaled, and the energy in his hand gathered again.

The bull was still bowing over and over, head low, completely unaware that Ethan’s intent had already shifted.

Then—without warning—Ethan brought his palm down.

Bang!

Compressed force hit the bull’s skull dead center. The impact drove straight down with a dull, heavy crack. A seam split across its massive head, and fractures crawled outward in an instant.

Right after, Ethan hooked his fingers inward and tore its energy core out through the split.

The bull’s pupils blew wide.

The panic from its pleading was still on its face, but it was swallowed almost immediately by something stronger—disbelief.

It clearly hadn’t imagined Ethan would strike after it had already knelt and surrendered.

But it was too late.

With the core gone, the life holding its body together collapsed. The enormous frame shuddered violently, then sagged—like all its support had been ripped out—crashing down with deep, unwilling resentment written into every twitch.

Queen Seraphine stood to the side and quietly let out a breath as well.

Truthfully, she’d never planned on keeping the beast. The evil energy rolling off it was too heavy. Even on its knees, the ferocity and malice in its bones hadn’t diminished at all. Something like that was only trouble if you let it live.

After dealing with the bull, neither of them lingered.

Ethan put the core away, and he and Queen Seraphine swept deeper into the mountain range.

The farther they went, the stranger the atmosphere became. Too many abnormal presences were hidden here—each one, taken alone, carried a crushing pressure. Ethan had no intention of letting them off.

More importantly, everything about this world felt wrong to him.

Storms. Native creatures. Varkharr. "Natural nemeses." Energy rules.

The more they pushed forward, the more those pieces seemed tangled together. He needed to catch someone—or something—heavy enough to talk, and pry the truth out of it, fast.

Not long after, they reached a gorge so narrow it felt like the mountains had bitten down.

Cliffs rose on both sides. Light was sliced into a thin line that fell from above, striping the valley floor in alternating brightness and shadow. Even the air felt heavier than outside, like something invisible had been pressing on his chest the whole time.

Ethan had barely taken a few steps in when his gaze locked on something standing in the middle of the canyon.

A gigantic man-eating flower.

It grew alone at the gorge’s center, but its size was monstrous—nearly as tall as the surrounding cliff walls. Its bloom faced upward, petals layered open one after another, each one pulsing with an unnatural energy fluctuation.

Worse... the aura leaking from it wasn’t gentle in the slightest.

It was heavy. Violent.

It carried a kind of power that felt like it could erase everything around it.

Just standing at the canyon’s edge and looking at it, the pressure in the air began climbing steadily. Even the rock walls around them started to tremble faintly under that crushing force.

Ethan had no intention of testing it slowly.

His gaze sank, and his body moved first.

The transparent lightning wings behind him snapped once in midair. He turned into a thin streak of electric light—shhk—crossing the narrow open stretch of the canyon in an instant and appearing right in front of the gigantic man-eating flower.

At the same time, transparent lightning spread off him.

It wasn’t sprayed out blindly. It ran along the canyon walls on both sides, the thin strip of sky overhead, and the shattered stone underfoot—expanding in multiple directions at once, weaving together in layers until it sealed the entire space.

Arcs cracked back and forth through the air, slicing the already oppressive gorge into something even tighter, even more suffocating.

The carnivorous flower had still been slowly leaking that destruction-level aura. Now, with Ethan locking it down at point-blank range, it didn’t even have time to fully mobilize the power inside it.

It had been caught completely off guard.

The huge bloom shuddered. Leaves and stalk tensed. It was just about to push its power outward when Ethan heard it speak—panicked, sharp.

"What are you—? Why are you ambushing me?!"

Ethan didn’t bother answering.

The power around him climbed again. He reached out with his right hand, hooked his fingers, and clamped down hard on the flower’s main root-stalk.

It looked thick, sturdy... but the moment it landed in his grip, it felt strangely fragile.

Ethan yanked upward.

The entire plant lurched. The ground around its base cracked, loose soil spilling down in thin streams.

"I’ll give you this," Ethan said, looking up at it, voice flat. "You seem like the honest type."

He tightened his grip just enough to make the threat clear.

"If you answer my questions properly, I won’t kill you."

The flower freaked out.

More than anyone, it knew its weakest spot wasn’t the bloom or the leaves.

It was this root-stalk—right here in Ethan’s hand.

If that got ripped out completely, even if it didn’t die on the spot, it wouldn’t have much fight left.

"Y-yes! You’re right—absolutely! I’m the most honest!" it blurted, instantly dropping its posture. Even its voice went soft, drenched in fear and desperate flattery.

"Ask whatever you want! I swear I won’t lie even once! If I tell a single lie, you can kill me on the spot!"

Seeing it like this, Ethan actually chuckled.

He didn’t increase the force in his hand yet. He just lifted his chin toward the eerie, too-quiet world around them.

"What’s going on here? Why isn’t there a single person in sight?" Ethan’s eyes stayed calm. "Did everyone hide?"

The flower nodded so fast it looked ridiculous.

"Yes—yes, everyone’s hiding!" It didn’t dare waste a second, spilling everything it knew. "These past few days are Varkharr’s Calamity Days! Everyone has to hide and avoid their natural nemesis! Otherwise... they’ll be torn to pieces! Completely wiped out!"