Ethan could tell at a glance—this power didn’t truly belong to Anya.

She’d absorbed the core energy of this ruined world, and because she had some bloodline-deep connection to the ruins, she’d managed to drag it into her body by force. But bringing it in didn’t mean she could control it.

If they didn’t suppress it fast, Anya would still get swollen to death and burst apart.

At this point, Ethan didn’t have any other choice.

He raised his hand and mobilized every thread of his transparent lightning. It gathered in his palm, then poured down his arm. One arc after another flowed from his fingertips into Anya—through the points where he touched her shoulder, wrist, and back—meeting the blood-red lightning rampaging inside her head-on.

The moment they touched, the two forces didn’t explode into a direct clash.

They tangled first.

Ethan’s transparent lightning pushed forward through her meridians and flesh. The blood-red lightning surged up from deep inside her in constant counterattacks. The two currents collided inch by inch inside her body... and then, inch by inch, started to merge.

Ethan could feel it clearly: that blood-red power was violent and heavy, carrying the oppressive pressure of this ruined world’s primal source. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

His transparent lightning, meanwhile, was more refined—more stable—like a straight blade pressing down, forcibly cutting the out-of-control flow back into order.

Something new began to form.

A low rumble rolled up from the ground. Loose debris in the ruins lifted and swirled. The air shook violently under the strain of those energies interlocking.

Centered on the two of them, shockwaves spread in rings. Gravel jumped and fell. The space around them filled with the crack of electricity colliding.

But the real change came a beat later.

The instant Ethan’s power fully "latched on" to Anya’s, the blood-crystal embedded in her suddenly erupted.

A never-before-seen surge slammed out from deep inside it.

It didn’t attack either of them. It didn’t reject anything.

It simply carried a brutally domineering pull—hooking both streams of power in Ethan and Anya and wrenching them together by force.

Ethan’s pupils flared wide.

His first instinct was to resist. His energy tightened immediately, trying to sever the forced fusion.

But the pull was too direct, and it came from the crystal that had already become part of Anya’s body.

He couldn’t break free.

And more importantly—after a few breaths, he realized it wasn’t harming him.

No devouring. No backlash. No collapse.

Just... fusion.

Ethan went still. He stopped forcing a cutoff and instead guided his own power to flow with it, keeping the merged current stable as it circulated between him and Anya.

Time passed.

Their energy rhythms began to synchronize—rise and fall, pulse frequency, even the timing of lightning discharge.

At first, the blood-red lightning fought like mad, surging and twisting. But as the fusion deepened, its color got diluted, swallowed, overwritten—until it finally turned completely transparent.

When everything settled, Anya’s body now held a vast amount of Infernal Primordial Power.

Ethan looked down at her, and real happiness finally surfaced in his eyes.

He’d always known Anya’s body was on the weak side.

But now it was different. If she could carry Infernal Primordial Power, then this wasn’t just stabilizing the chaos inside her—it could reshape her body for real.

He didn’t waste time. He adjusted his breathing, pressed his aura down to its calmest state, then began guiding the Infernal Primordial Power in careful threads into Anya.

He didn’t flood her.

She couldn’t take that.

So step one was making her physical body adapt.

Transparent power spread slowly through her limbs, bones, and meridians, laying down a foundation from the inside. Once that base stabilized, Ethan pushed deeper, letting the power seep into the spaces between flesh and blood.

It wasn’t violent.

It was meticulous.

Occasionally, arcs still snapped across Anya’s skin—but there was no more loss of control.

Her ragged breathing gradually smoothed out. Her shoulders stopped shaking. The turbulent energy under her skin finally settled into a clean, orderly circulation.

After a while, she opened her eyes.

At first there was a faint daze in them, the leftover fog of waking up from chaos.

Then clarity returned—quickly. But this time, something about her was different.

Not in an exaggerated way. Same face, same outline—still that unfairly adorable little girl. But sitting there quietly now, she carried a completely different sense of weight.

Power that didn’t need to shout.

"Ethan..." Anya looked up at him, her voice still soft with that just-woke-up sweetness, "I feel like something changed in my body. Was it your power... assimilating mine?"

Ethan paused for a fraction of a second.

He hadn’t expected a little kid to be that sharp.

But he didn’t explain. He just lifted a hand, ruffled her hair, and casually pressed the moment down like it didn’t matter. Then he took Anya out of the ruins and onto the warship waiting nearby.

This Plane World wasn’t that far from Emerald Castle.

On a mid-sized ship, they could make it in two days.

And most of the route ran through territory Emerald Castle already controlled, so the flight should’ve been safe. After leaving the ruins, the ship cruised smoothly—right up until the second day, when something finally went wrong.

It happened without warning.

The warship was flying normally when the hull suddenly let out a heavy boom. The entire craft shuddered like it had slammed into something head-on. The groan of compressed metal ran from the bow all the way to the tail, and the instruments in the control room rattled in response.

Ethan’s nerves snapped tight.

He activated every weapons system immediately. Energy lines lit up across the ship as it shifted into full combat readiness. At the same time, he pulled up the system and ran a comprehensive scan of the surrounding space.

The results came back fast.

Nothing.

No enemies. No obstacles. Not even a stray ripple of energy.

The readouts were so steady it felt wrong, like that impact had never happened at all.

Ethan didn’t relax.

If you couldn’t find the problem, that usually meant the problem was worse than you thought.

He redistributed the ship’s energy, diverting part of the thrust into defense and detection, and personally double-checked the external data.

No matter how many times he ran it, the outcome didn’t change.

Empty space. No anomalies.

Anya didn’t seem bothered.

She sat off to the side with her hand raised, fingers spread, studying the transparent energy that occasionally crawled between her palm and knuckles. Her eyes were bright with curiosity.

Now that the power had fused with what she already had, the way it circulated inside her felt different. She could sense it clearly—she just hadn’t gotten used to it yet.

After another sweep confirmed there was still no new movement, Ethan didn’t waste more time hovering in paranoia. He walked over, ruffled Anya’s hair again, then turned back to the control seat.

The warship returned to steady flight.

The control room settled into silence. Outside the observation window, the scenery slid by in slow, endless bands.

Ethan sat in the pilot chair and watched the monotonous stretch of space for a while. The calm started dragging at him. After days of fighting and draining himself, the fatigue finally caught up—his eyelids growing heavier by the second.

He was just about to let them close when—

The ship lurched violently again.

A louder explosion rocked the hull, and the last of the drowsiness was shaken clean out of Ethan’s eyes.