Ethan forced the churning power in his chest back down and turned his gaze to the ruined warship beneath his feet.

If that Infernal Abyss servant had Infernal Primordial Power inside him, then there was a good chance this ship’s core energy contained the same thing.

He didn’t hesitate.

Snow-white lightning detonated under his boots, and Ethan slammed straight down into the ship’s depths.

The thick outer hull tore open in front of him. Energy conduits snapped one after another. Flames and defensive force spat at him along the way, but the moment they got close, they were ground to dust by the snow-white lightning wrapped around his body.

He shot straight into the warship’s core sector.

The densest concentration of energy in the entire vessel was gathered there.

The core device was wrapped in layers of metal and energy shielding. Inside it, a constantly rotating power source churned, holding the ship together and keeping it running.

Ethan reached out, shoved his hand through the fractured barrier, grabbed the core energy—

and ripped.

The whole warship shuddered.

He tore the core out of the device, and the remaining defensive runes and metal framework around it collapsed in a chain reaction.

Just like he’d guessed, that core energy also held an extremely tyrannical thread of Infernal Primordial Power. It wasn’t as pure as the snow-white crystal from earlier—

but there was a lot more of it.

Ethan pulled it into his body.

Snow-white light spread from his chest again, and he felt himself fill fast.

Every inch of flesh, every strand of meridian, was forced open all over again. The exhaustion from the back-to-back battles was shoved down hard, replaced by a fullness so intense it bordered on intoxicating.

He stood inside the wreckage of the ship’s core. Metal plates kept collapsing around him. Fire jetted through cracks in the hull.

None of it could get close.

Then—right as Ethan was absorbing the last of the power here—

the sky above split open with a massive dimensional rift.

It ripped through the cloud layer, its edges churned with chaotic spatial turbulence.

All across the battlefield, people looked up.

A figure dropped straight out of the rift’s depths. He stopped in midair instead of falling further, but the power around him was already spilling out uncontrollably.

"That’s impossible!"

He roared, his voice crushing even the booming explosions of the warships.

"How did it end up like this?!"

Before the words had even fully landed, the power inside him erupted.

Wind-element power—straight from The Infernal Abyss.

Blue-black currents whipped up around his body, condensing into a dense storm of wind blades.

Every single blade was terrifyingly sharp. The moment they formed, they swept outward in all directions. They sliced the air, shredded the clouds, and when they skimmed a few floating chunks of warship debris, they shaved that heavy metal down into thin sheets.

But the worst part—

wherever the wind blades passed, they carved thin cracks into space itself.

Those cracks multiplied, crisscrossing each other, spreading like a broken spiderweb that kept widening.

If he was allowed to keep releasing like this, the space around the battlefield would be cut into fragments.

The consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

Ethan lifted his head from the warship wreckage.

He didn’t bother absorbing whatever core energy remained.

Snow-white lightning flashed underfoot, and he shot out of the ship, rising into the air.

Infernal Abyss wind blades were already sweeping toward him. The air filled with a continuous, shrieking cut—so dense it sounded like one long scream as the space around him started to split.

Ethan raised a hand.

White lightning erupted from his palm, first condensing into a thick arc—then splitting into dozens of streaks that charged straight into the oncoming wind blades.

Lightning and wind slammed together in midair. White glare and blue-black currents detonated in tangled bursts, and the shockwave rippled across the high sky.

Boom—boom—boom! 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

With every collision, new dimensional tears were ripped open.

Ethan’s lightning kept pushing forward. The other man’s wind blades kept falling in an endless stream.

Two forces born of The Infernal Abyss tore at each other like mad. The space above the warship couldn’t hold steady anymore. Dimensional rifts blossomed around them one after another, slicing the entire sky into shattered fragments.

Ethan hovered above the broken warship, white lightning still snapping in his palm.

Across from him, the Infernal Abyss expert didn’t slow.

Blue-black wind coiled around his body. Razor-edged blades kept peeling out of it, sweeping the sky, shredding clouds and floating ship debris—and even carving into the edges of space itself.

Every blade that passed left behind a long, thin black cut in the air. The edges trembled, as if they might widen at any moment.

Ethan could feel how dangerous it was.

This wasn’t ordinary wind-element power. It came from The Infernal Abyss—sharp, violent, and carrying the trait of tearing dimensional space apart.

If the man kept releasing like this, the cracks would eventually connect, and the entire patch of sky would be ripped to pieces.

Ethan didn’t waste a second.

All the white lightning in his body surged out, rushing up his arm into his palm. At first it was just a tight cluster of light. Then more and more power packed in, swelling into a massive sphere of energy.

The surface of the sphere churned constantly. Inside, layers of white lightning braided and wrapped around each other. Every compression kicked the surrounding air outward in a visible blast-ring.

Ethan lifted his arm and hurled the sphere like a hammer.

It tore free from his palm and shot straight at his opponent.

Along its path, wind blades were crushed apart by raw lightning pressure. Even the space that had already been cut open was forced to curl back to either side, like something heavy was rolling through it.

In the distance, a few Emerald Castle soldiers saw the line of attack and immediately scattered backward—no one daring to stay anywhere near that trajectory.

The Infernal Abyss expert’s eyes widened.

Shock flashed across his face, then twisted into disbelief.

A mere human... controlling the supreme lightning of The Infernal Abyss, and condensing it into an attack at this level—head-on.

It blew past everything he thought he understood.

Boom—!

He didn’t dare underestimate Ethan anymore. He brought both arms together in front of him, and a savage surge of power poured out.

The blue-black wind compressed into a thin line in front of his hands, then stretched—lengthening in an instant—forming into a sharp spear.

Infernal Abyss wind-element power coiled along the spear’s surface. Every tiny tremor of the tip cut fine cracks into the air.

He grabbed the spear and threw it with all his strength.

The moment it left his hand, it screamed through the sky and slammed toward Ethan’s lightning sphere.

The two forces collided head-on.

White lightning and blue-black wind exploded at the same time. The shockwave ripped upward, shredding the cloud layer—then slammed downward hard enough to make several already-ruined warships below rock violently in place.

Boom—boom—BOOM!

At the center of the impact, a huge chunk of dimensional space was torn open.

This rupture didn’t seal like an ordinary crack. It was held open by the ongoing collision, its edges rolling and peeling back, revealing a deep, chaotic glow inside—dark and unsettled, like a storm seen through a wound.

Ethan’s eyes tightened, and he pulled back a step in midair.

He could see the tear growing.

Worse—he could feel the other man’s wind-element power still pushing from the far side, prying it wider.

Ethan immediately drew up what remained of his power. White lightning gathered back into his arm, readying an even heavier strike to crush that unstable dimensional space shut—

But the next instant, a heavy rumble rolled through heaven and earth.

The rift changed.

The scattered cracks didn’t keep breaking apart.

Instead, it was like something on the other side had grabbed them and started dragging them into alignment—linking one to the next.

Black cuts connected. Edges stabilized. And in the sky, they formed massive spatial corridors, one after another.

From deep inside those corridors, the outlines of warships slowly emerged.

The first warship pushed its prow through, the heavy hull forcing itself across the boundary as its energy core flared with a blinding light.

Then a second.

A third.

More—one after another—until the sky was filling with them.

They hovered around the corridors, each one radiating a terrifying energy pressure. Cannons, shields, and hull runes lit up at once, turning the entire heavens into a chaotic, glaring mess that made it hard to even breathe.