Ethan moved instantly.

He cut in from the side and appeared right in front of Anya, yanking her out of the attack line in one motion.

At the same time, he shoved both hands forward. Space compressed, and a heavy barrier condensed in front of them.

The energy released by the yellow gemstone slammed into the barrier.

The impact spread outward.

The spatial shield dented inward—but didn’t crack. The aftershock bled off along the edges, and the floating ruins nearby were shaken into even finer fragments.

Ethan’s eyes turned cold.

"You’ll go after a kid, too?"

He raised a hand.

Transparent lightning exploded from his core and shot down his arm. In midair it fanned out like a blade, smashing into the giant’s chest.

Lightning burst across his body.

But the giant only rocked slightly.

A faint pale mark remained on his surface.

No break. No penetration.

Before Ethan could chain the next strike, Anya had already dropped onto the ruins below.

She lifted her palm and slammed it onto the ground.

The instant she touched down, power spread out from her body.

Energy raced through the cracks in the earth, reconnecting her to the entire ruin field. In the next breath, the ruins’ energy began to gather toward her.

The air changed.

Loose, scattered power got tugged inward, collapsing toward her center. Broken structures started to tremble. Dark energy surged from underground, forming a pillar that shot straight into the sky.

The world’s leftover force was coming to her on its own.

Ethan’s eyes lit.

Whoever held that power—so long as it didn’t end up in the enemy’s hands—was an advantage.

"You’re asking to die!" the giant roared.

His energy spread in an instant. Dense power pressed down from above like a collapsing wall of force, blanketing toward Anya.

Ethan shot upward.

Black particle mode—active.

His body broke apart midair into countless black grains... and vanished. When he reappeared, those particles had already seeped into the giant’s surface, spreading inward fast.

The giant’s face snapped tight.

"What did you do?!"

His internal energy started to snarl.

"How did you get inside me? Get out—now—or I’ll crush you!"

Ethan didn’t answer.

The black particles moved through the giant’s body at high speed, converging at the center of his chest. The grains recombined, and Ethan re-formed right at the giant’s "heart."

A blood-red crystal.

The entire heart was a crystalline structure, energy compressed so tightly it felt like a solidified core.

Ethan’s breath stalled for a fraction of a second.

He could feel the density inside that crystal—and the way it strengthened the soul itself.

His eyes went bright, almost sharp with hunger.

Rune power unfolded from within him immediately. Energy spread out from his body, sank into the crystal core, and seeped outward through the giant’s entire system.

It flooded his limbs and bones, establishing control in seconds.

The giant’s body went rigid.

Its energy circulation was rewritten in real time.

In the next instant, the giant completely lost autonomous control.

"To me, you’re nothing but a puppet," Ethan’s voice came from inside the giant. "I can control you however I want."

He released everything.

Power tore outward through the giant’s body, ripping at flesh from the inside—

At the same time, Anya had already pulled nearly all the remaining power beneath the ruins into herself.

At first, it was just a steady convergence.

Shattered earth. Collapsed buildings. Buried wreckage deeper down—every last trace of force that could still be drawn out streamed toward her through ground fissures, chaotic air currents, even the faint ruin-glow that hadn’t fully died.

But the problem surfaced fast.

Her body couldn’t take it.

Anya’s slender frame visibly swelled—more than a full size larger. Her arms and cheeks puffed up, and turbulent energy surged under her skin in ugly waves, like something was ramming back and forth through her flesh. She stood there struggling to breathe, shoulders trembling, while the air around her shuddered in pulses—pushed outward by the power in her that was starting to slip control.

If this kept going... she was going to burst.

Even while he was inside the giant’s body, Ethan kept a slice of his attention on the outside.

The moment he sensed Anya’s condition, he didn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat. He yanked his energy out of the giant immediately.

Black particles streamed back along the giant’s flesh in a rapid retreat—and in the next instant, Ethan shot out of that massive body.

But he didn’t leave empty-handed.

As his hand swept past the core of the chest cavity, he reached in and plucked the giant’s heart out.

The instant the blood-red crystal left its body, the giant’s remaining power fluctuations collapsed on the spot. The enormous frame froze midair for a split second, then dropped straight down.

Ethan didn’t even spare it a glance.

Clutching the blood-crystal heart, he surged toward Anya at top speed.

When he reached her, he raised a hand first to stabilize her out-of-control body.

Transparent energy spilled from his palm and spread over her like a forced shell, pressing down on the power that was about to burst through her skin and shoving it back in—temporarily.

But Ethan knew that would only buy seconds. It wouldn’t fix the root problem.

So he made the call.

He pressed the heart-crystal he’d just taken straight into Anya’s body.

It was priceless.

He didn’t care. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Getting Anya back mattered more than any calculation.

The blood-red crystal entered her without rejection. If anything, the moment it touched the violent, near-runaway energy inside her, it lit up.

A deep red glow spread from the crystal’s core, seeping through her flesh in layers—absorbing, compressing, and gathering the rampaging power back into order.

Anya’s body—swollen to the edge of disaster—finally began to stabilize, bit by bit.

Ethan immediately checked her internal state. Once he confirmed she wasn’t getting worse, the pressure in his chest loosened slightly.

Then—right as he started to rise—something changed again.

Blood-red lightning began crawling across Anya’s skin.

It wasn’t striking from outside.

It was pouring out from within her.

First, tiny arcs snapped around her wrists and the base of her throat. Then it spread fast—up her arms, over her shoulders, across the surface of her whole body.

Crack-crack-CRACK—

The sound of electricity detonated in rapid bursts. The air around her shivered like it was being cut, and the gravel on the ground kept hopping as arcs lashed over it.

That power carried an intensely pure Primordial Force.

And worse—

Anya wasn’t controlling it at all.