Ethan raised a hand and swept it forward.

A thunderclap detonated across the sky.

It was the signal for a full-scale assault.

"Kill!"

Everyone on Emerald Castle’s side moved at once. Waves of warriors in Powered Combat Armor surged out from the defensive line around the castle.

Their armor thrusters flared. Energy weapons unfolded in unison. One after another, they charged straight at the towering humanoid machines, momentum rolling off them like a tidal wave.

Ethan was about to lead the main force in himself when he suddenly felt something tug lightly at his back.

He turned.

Idra, Auri, and Nysera stood there, neat as can be—three little girls, shoulder to shoulder.

Violent white lightning churned around them, so dense it felt almost physical. Arcs snapped from their shoulders, wrists, and even the tips of their hair—only to be forced back down into their bodies by sheer will.

It wasn’t a loss of control.

It was what happened when your power jumped too fast, and your body was still catching up.

Ethan’s gaze swept over the three of them, and he understood immediately.

While he’d been gone these past few days, all three of them had gotten a serious boost.

The energy they’d brought back from the last campaign in Elysion had been rich—special. And part of it had been practically made for them.

Before Ethan left, the power building inside them had already become too much. They’d been entering an evolution phase.

Now, it was obvious.

They’d finished evolving.

Their Tier—and the depth of their strength—had reached a level they’d never touched before.

Especially Nysera.

The Infernal Primordial Power rolling off her was terrifying. Inside her white lightning, there was something else now—an overbearing void energy, cold and dominant.

The instant it surfaced, the air around her tore into fine black scars... only to be scrubbed smooth again by the crackling white light.

There wasn’t time to talk.

The battlefield was already right in their faces.

Ethan immediately drew up the transparent lightning within him, letting his own power surge outward and fuse with the girls’ white lightning, Nysera’s Infernal Primordial Power, and each of their individual strengths.

The transparent lightning spread first, like an invisible net, wrapping around the energy raging off their bodies.

The next moment, the black particulate transformation inside Ethan activated.

Idra, Auri, and Nysera changed with it—their outlines fading, their bodies dissolving into mist-like energy.

Guided along the pull of the transparent lightning, three streams of presence rushed into Ethan, connecting to him almost instantly—like a circuit snapping cleanly into place.

Boom!

A brutal wave of power erupted from Ethan.

In that instant, his Tier surged to the mid-stage of 35 Tier.

Dust on the ground was pressed flat like it had been stomped by an invisible giant. Emerald Castle’s soldiers charging nearby felt a sudden heat flare at their backs—then saw lightning exploding off Ethan in endless bursts, transparent and white woven together.

Even the huge humanoid machines in the distance stalled for the briefest moment, like their sensors had just picked up an energy signature that shouldn’t exist.

Ethan took a quick breath, feeling the roaring strength inside him, and excitement flickered across his face.

He lifted his hand.

Transparent lightning, white lightning, and void energy condensed above his palm—spinning, compressing, collapsing—until it formed a massive sphere of transparent lightning.

White sparks flashed inside it like trapped stars. Along the edges, tiny black cracks crawled in and out of existence, the whole thing so tightly packed it looked dangerously unstable.

Ethan thrust his hand forward.

The giant sphere slammed into the enemy lines.

Hng!

RUMBLE—RUMBLE—RUMBLE!

The moment it dropped into their formation, a gigantic void vortex tore open in the sky.

It spread outward from the center like a black mouth yawning wide, dragging in the surrounding enemy troops—and the ground beneath their feet—like it was all weightless debris.

The Valgari soldiers and even some of the massive humanoid machines were swallowed up. The instant they entered, they were shredded by savage forces.

Flesh. Metal. Shields. Energy cores.

Everything ripped apart in the spinning pull.

White lightning detonated again and again inside the vortex, cleaving straight into the enemy’s soul fluctuations.

The ones caught inside didn’t even get the chance to break free. Their souls were blown into fragments—so completely that not even a clean echo was left behind.

And the violence didn’t stop.

The void vortex kept sweeping, expanding, as if it meant to drag the entire battlefield down with it.

High above, inside The Dominion’s colossal warship, the old man stared at the power rippling off Ethan—and went rigid.

He truly hadn’t expected Ethan to be able to unleash this level of strength in the middle of a battlefield.

The very next second, he snapped back to himself.

An aged voice boomed out through The Dominion, rolling across heaven and earth.

"Now—kill him!"

The instant that order fell, the underside of The Dominion lit up again.

Violent energy surged from deep within the massive warship, gathering in a heartbeat. Golden light went feral along the etched lines of its hull, flooding every groove like molten metal.

Then a brutal beam lanced straight down from the sky, spear-straight, hammering toward where Ethan stood.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed a fraction.

The golden beam had already crushed down to just above his head. The glare tore open the cloud cover, and even the air around it warped, seared into a shimmering twist.

That power wasn’t just "falling" downward, either. It carried a heavy sense of lock-on—like the entire ship had tilted its core firepower and pinned it all onto him.

He didn’t retreat.

The strength inside him surged out in the same breath. Transparent lightning detonated from his shoulders, his arms, and beneath his feet—bursting wide until, in the blink of an eye, it spread across the whole sky.

Sheets of electric light rolled upward in layers, piling over themselves above his head until they hardened into a colossal thunder barrier.

And then it met the beam from The Dominion head-on.

The moment the two forces collided, the sky split.

The golden pillar pressed down. The transparent lightning shoved up. Where they touched, a blinding sphere of white erupted.

Cracks—dense and jagged—ran across the high heavens like spiderwebs. It looked like some invisible hand was tearing the entire firmament apart.

Shockwaves ringed outward, one after another, and the two armies still fighting in the distance got swallowed by it. Shields shattered with sharp pops. Metal screamed as it warped. Soldiers grunted as they were thrown back, the sounds stacking on top of each other in a single violent chorus.

Ethan’s expression changed.

If this kept going, Emerald Castle’s fighters were going to take pointless losses. He didn’t care how many enemies died—but his own people shouldn’t get dragged into the backlash for nothing.

At this point, holding back wasn’t an option.

Ethan pressed his left hand down, splitting his power again.

A strange dimensional ripple threaded through the transparent lightning, racing outward along the edge of the battlefield. In seconds it unfolded into an unusually structured spatial barrier—thin, precise, and wrong in a way that made the air feel deeper than it should’ve been.

It didn’t completely cut off the battlefield.

Instead, it covered every single Emerald Castle warrior with surgical accuracy, sealing them inside its protection while keeping the aftershocks from the beam-and-lightning collision outside.

At the same time, he clenched his right hand in front of his chest.

A violent sphere of energy formed instantly in his palm.

Lightning churned inside it like a storm trapped in glass. Around its surface, space itself collapsed and re-knit over and over, as if the destructive force had been compressed past what the world wanted to allow.

Ethan didn’t hesitate.

He snapped his arm forward and hurled the sphere straight at The Dominion.

The energy ball tore through the upper sky and slammed dead-center into the warship’s defensive shield.

Boom!

The golden barrier around the ship shuddered hard. Its once-smooth, stable surface blew open on the spot—ripping into a massive fissure.

The crack spread rapidly across the shield in all directions. It didn’t fully break through, but the energy flow above The Dominion immediately turned chaotic, the once-clean currents twisting into obvious turbulence.