Ethan adjusted his breathing, just a little.

Then, using the dimensional barrier as cover, he pulled the Emerald Castle fighters back fast, retreating to a safe zone several thousand feet away.

Only after he was sure his army had cleared the most dangerous collision zone did he lift his gaze to the sky again.

Up on The Dominion, the old man watched it happen—and his face went completely dark.

His teeth ground so hard they clicked. He was obviously right on the edge of losing it. If this kept up, The Dominion’s firepower wouldn’t crush Ethan quickly, and the ground legions would get dragged into a drawn-out war of attrition by Emerald Castle.

He stopped hesitating.

He raised a hand and clenched it hard toward the heavens.

"O great Titan Sovereign!"

The old voice spread through The Dominion, stamping down on every roar of the battlefield until it felt like the whole world went quiet just to hear him.

"This insignificant little thing wants to strike at Your people. I ask that You punish them."

The moment the words fell, the energy in the depths of the sky changed.

An overbearing presence spilled out above The Dominion. Golden light braided with a heavy, deep red glow, like something that had been asleep for ages was being hauled awake by force.

Not long after, a towering giant slowly emerged in the sky.

His body was massive, hanging in the air in front of The Dominion, and the space around him warped nonstop just from his existence.

Every time his aura rolled outward, nearby clouds shattered into huge patches of mist. In the center of his chest was a red gemstone, set like a core. Light flowed inside it, and the energy it gave off was thick—dangerous—like if it fully erupted, it could grind the entire battlefield into dust.

The second Ethan saw him, his stomach sank.

He hadn’t expected The Valgari to have something like this in their hands.

And more importantly, this Titan Sovereign wasn’t some simple war construct. There was clear awareness in those eyes. His aura wasn’t stiff like a dead thing—it carried a cold, superior scrutiny, as if he were looking down and deciding what was worth noticing.

He had terrifying intelligence.

Ethan drew in a deep breath.

The next second, his power exploded. His whole body turned into a streak of interwoven transparent and white lightning as he shot straight at the Titan Sovereign.

The air ripped open behind him in a long scar. White lightning compressed at the front of his fist—then he drove it hard into the Titan Sovereign’s chest.

Boom!

The instant the hit landed, the energy patterns across the giant’s chest shuddered violently.

Domineering white lightning detonated across his torso, crawling fast toward the area around that red gemstone.

The Titan Sovereign’s half-lidded eyes snapped open.

A terrifying surge rolled out of him and knocked Ethan back a short distance, like swatting away something that had annoyed him.

"I truly didn’t expect it," the Titan Sovereign said, his voice deep and heavy. Every word made the surrounding space tremble. "In a world like this... someone can actually control Infernal Primordial Power."

His gaze fixed on Ethan, sharp and measuring.

"In that case," he continued, "let me see just how strong you really are."

After he spoke, his enormous body drew back one slow step.

That single step made the nearby space distort violently. At his forehead, countless energy vortices appeared—spinning, stacking, compressing—until they fused into a beam so bright it felt like it could burn straight through the sky.

The beam erupted.

The moment Ethan saw it take shape, a weight hit his chest.

He immediately spread his arms. Transparent lightning surged out of him in a flood, forming a massive lightning beam between his hands.

He shoved both arms forward.

With a shrieking electric scream, his beam slammed into the Titan Sovereign’s attack head-on.

The two beams collided midair.

Boom—!

The power that burst out was even more terrifying than The Dominion’s earlier shot.

Several huge rifts were torn open across the high sky. Down on the ground, broken stone and scattered wreckage shook loose and floated up—only to be ground into powder by the aftershock.

Far away, both armies were forced to fall back. Even a few Valgari warships were shoved off formation by the impact, their hulls tilting as they fought to stabilize.

Their energy was too strong.

If they kept trading blows like this, the world around them really would crack apart.

But as the two forces tangled and ripped at each other, they finally triggered a powerful dimensional space high above.

At first, a thin ring of tiny whirlpools appeared. Then the vortices swelled rapidly, merging into a gigantic point of spatial pull—an ugly, hungry sink that began swallowing the shockwaves and leftover energy from their clash.

Under that relentless suction, the conflict between the two beams finally started to quiet down, inch by inch.

Ethan watched the energy fade, his gaze turning even colder.

At their level, raw energy blasts almost never decided a fight anymore.

Forcing a head-on beam duel would only drag the entire battlefield into annihilation. The most effective approach was the opposite—compress everything into the body, and settle it up close.

The Titan Sovereign clearly understood that too.

He narrowed his eyes slightly, then took a step back. That massive, sky-blocking body began to shrink rapidly—bones and energy framework compressing tighter and tighter. The glow of the red gemstone pulled inward as well, dimming into restraint.

Not long after, he’d become something roughly human-sized, floating between heaven and earth.

Smaller frame.

But the pressure he gave off was even more concentrated.

Bottomless power rippled off him in slow waves. With every breath, the space around him trembled in tiny, visible distortions. Then, between his hands, a golden energy sphere condensed.

It wasn’t large, but it bled out destruction, so heavy the nearby air let out a low, muffled groan under the weight.

Ethan drew a deep breath.

He lifted both hands too, mirroring the Titan Sovereign, and formed a sphere of transparent lightning between his palms.

Clear arcs coiled around it. White lightning flashed inside. Rings of spatial ripples shimmered across its surface like the skin of water under stress.

They stared at each other across the distance.

Neither moved first.

After a brief silence, they crushed the energy spheres almost at the same time.

Golden power and transparent lightning burst—yet instead of exploding outward, they snapped inward, coating their bodies like a second skin.

The Titan Sovereign looked like he’d thrown on a suit of golden battle armor. Around Ethan, transparent-and-white electricity flowed between his skin and the edges of his clothes, crawling and flashing in tight, controlled currents.

All their power had been forced into flesh and bone—optimized for close combat.

Ethan looked straight at him. His voice came out ice-cold.

"I’ve seen plenty of shameless trash like you."

A crack of lightning popped under his feet, spreading in little bursts.

"Your own civilization’s running out of energy, so you come to someone else’s world to steal theirs."

His eyes sharpened.

"Pathetic."

"Today I’m going to show you what happens when you break into someone else’s home and try to take what isn’t yours."

The moment the words ended, Ethan lunged.

He moved so fast he became a single streak of lightning. The pressure of his passage made the heavens shudder; the air tore into layered transparent ripples. Down on the battlefield, soldiers only caught a thin line of light slicing past before it was gone.

The Titan Sovereign drew in a breath as well, and the golden power on his body flared to full.

He threw a punch.

Their bodies met head-on in midair.

The very first touch detonated a terrifying ring of shockwave.