Ethan drew in a deep breath, spread his arms, and lifted off the ground.

Transparent lightning detonated under his feet, kicking him upward. In the blink of an eye, he’d climbed a hundred meters and landed steady on top of the massive Sky Fortress.

From that height, he looked down over the entire battlefield.

"All forces—prepare for full-scale battle!" 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

His voice, amplified by energy, rolled out heavy and clean. It cut straight through artillery fire, explosions, and the screams of battle, reaching every corner of the skies around Emerald Castle.

The Valgari troops still pushing forward hadn’t even fully processed it before a brutal pressure poured down from above.

It wasn’t just sound. It was his presence—his power—slamming down with the words. A few Valgari soldiers closer to the front stalled mid-step. Fine cracking noises came from their shields. When they looked up, their faces had already changed.

Deep in the formation, the commander in charge—Varik Kron—lifted his head too.

The instant he made out the figure in the sky, he realized Ethan was already moving.

A flash of transparent light.

Ethan dove off the Sky Fortress, spearing straight down toward Varik Kron’s position.

"Hmph. I’ll take you."

In the middle of the army, Draxor Thane shot upward.

His massive body cut directly into Ethan’s path. He spread his five fingers wide, heavy energy patterns rising around his palm like plated armor.

Ethan didn’t change course. He drove his right arm forward, and transparent lightning snapped around his fist. Arcs danced along the knuckles, dragging a straight streak of light as he blasted in.

Draxor met him with a palm strike of his own.

Fist and palm collided head-on in midair.

Boom!

Space warped at the point of impact. A visible ring-shaped shockwave exploded outward. A violent sonic boom swept the battlefield—Valgari soldiers nearby had their shields rattled hard, and the dust that hadn’t even settled yet got slammed flat... only to roll back up a second later in a churning wave.

Draxor thought that one palm would be enough to stop Ethan.

But in the instant their power locked...

A few threads of transparent lightning quietly slipped out from beneath Ethan’s fist, hugging the contact point as they seeped into Draxor’s hand and into his body. The current didn’t erupt right away. It burrowed inward along muscle, blood vessels, and energy pathways—deeper, deeper—until it reached the core.

Then it detonated.

Draxor’s expression snapped.

By the time he sensed something was wrong, he was already a beat too late. His eyes went wide. He hammered both fists into his own chest, trying to shock the electricity out of himself.

It didn’t work.

This wasn’t some ordinary foreign energy. Once the transparent lightning got inside, it tore through flesh from within. Numbness and agony spread together, like countless tiny blades swimming through his body.

He didn’t understand Ethan.

And he understood even less what this transparent lightning really did.

Ethan’s mouth tipped up—just a little.

He dropped his center of gravity in midair and fired another punch.

The system had already scanned their panels clean. Ethan didn’t just know their names.

He knew their weak points.

The second punch smashed into Draxor.

"AAH!"

Draxor screamed as his body sank in the air from the blow. Before he could stabilize, light flared in Ethan’s palm, and an even more violent current flooded in through the point of contact.

This time, the transparent lightning didn’t bother hiding.

It exploded inside Draxor, shredding the flow of his power and throwing his entire internal circulation into chaos.

"Lord! I’m coming!"

From the other side, Desert Queen Kaelira surged into the air.

With a sharp shout, purple-red light burst off her. Energy unfurled behind her back—scorching heat and razor pressure rolling together—as she shot toward Ethan’s section of the fight to support him.

But the moment she tried to close in, a black blur shot out from the Valgari formation.

"Your opponent is me!"

Varik Kron moved like a ghost, impossibly fast, cutting in front of Kaelira. Black energy and purple-red light slammed together in midair. The shockwave tore outward to both sides, forcing several nearby Valgari soldiers to stagger back under the aftershock.

Kaelira’s killing intent only burned hotter.

"You think you’re worth stopping me?"

She spread her arms, and behind her a phoenix phantom slowly took shape.

Its outline was made of purple-red energy. The moment it appeared, it let out a piercing cry. With that shriek, blazing power surged from the phantom, turning into a tide of burning light that swept toward Varik Kron.

Purple-red energy swallowed Varik’s body.

Heat licked across his skin, scorching as it traveled. The air around them shimmered and warped, and even the broken stones on the ground below began to glow faintly red.

For a split second, Kaelira thought she had him pinned.

Then Varik’s body blurred—turning into a mass of black, wraithlike shadow. In his place, a deep black trace of void was left behind.

That void opened like a mouth.

And it swallowed the purple-red energy clinging to him in one clean gulp.

Kaelira’s eyes went wide.

That kind of violent power... and he could just swallow it?

Varik reappeared, lifting an arm. Void energy gathered again in his palm.

The next moment, the purple-red energy he’d consumed surged back out—mixed with that black void—and it came crashing toward Kaelira in reverse.

"Returning it to its rightful owner!"

He roared the words out.

Purple-red energy, laced with void force, slammed forward. It felt colder than before—more chaotic, more wrong. Wherever it passed, the edges of space were dragged into thin black scratches, like someone had raked claws across the air.

Kaelira snorted.

Behind her, the phoenix phantom cried out again. Purple-red energy compressed into a thick beam and blasted forward from in front of her.

The two forces collided head-on in midair. The purple-red pillar and the void-tainted counterstrike tore at each other, and the impacts rolled out in a continuous chain of thunder.

Rumble—!

Rumble, rumble, rumble—!

Ethan felt that terrifying turbulence too.

He already had Draxor pinned and was firmly in control of the exchange. But the moment he saw Kaelira getting tangled up by Varik’s strange ability, he peeled away without hesitation. Transparent lightning snapped through the air in a sharp turn, and he appeared at Kaelira’s side in an instant.

Transparent lightning burst from his body and fed directly into Kaelira’s purple-red beam.

The two powers didn’t cancel each other out.

They drove forward side by side—transparent lightning ripping open the outer layer of void energy, while the purple-red column pushed inward with scorching heat, drilling deeper.

Varik’s counterattack was blocked by their combined force. The energies locked in place in midair, neither side able to completely overwhelm the other right away.

On the ground, soldiers froze mid-motion.

Emerald Castle’s side or the Valgari’s—it didn’t matter. The closest fighters all instinctively backed off.

When those energies collided, even the spillover could blast craters into the earth. Getting caught head-on wasn’t a risk anyone was stupid enough to take.

The stalemate dragged on.

Just as Ethan was about to pour in more power, he sensed something off—something coming from deep overhead.

Not Varik. Not the Valgari formation on the ground.

Higher.

Far above—tens of thousands of feet up, inside the cloud layer—a gigantic outline was slowly taking shape. It was too high and too massive to make out at first. All he could see was the clouds being pushed aside by an enormous shadow.

Then, from deep within that cloud cover, strands of golden light began to glow—one after another, like something waking up.