Ethan’s breathing turned heavy.

These warships didn’t belong to the fleet from before.

Which meant the civilizations eyeing Elysion weren’t just one group.

Everyone in Emerald Castle reacted instantly. Warriors who’d been chasing down the leftovers stopped scattering and regrouped. The Sky Fortress adjusted its heading. Powered Combat Armor lifted off in waves, and layer after layer of energy barriers unfolded in front of the formation.

Every single person snapped into full alert, eyes locked on the spatial corridors still opening in the sky.

Nobody treated this like a simple cleanup fight anymore.

On the far side of the heavens, Queen Elowen and Phoenix Queen Ignara had already forced the golden figure into a final, desperate state.

The three of them were tangled together near the seam where two worlds collided. Golden dimensional power, Eternal Flame, and extreme ice crashed into each other over and over, shaking the surrounding space until rings of fractures spread outward.

If Ethan hadn’t spread his power out before leaving—bracing the gap between the two worlds by force—this border zone would’ve been torn apart long ago by the shockwaves of their clash.

The golden figure’s breathing had gone ragged.

He stumbled back several steps, floating in midair, the golden light on his body flickering strong and weak like a failing lamp.

Even so, he raised both arms and forcibly gathered his power again. Dense golden spikes formed around him, each one blazing with harsh light, their tips aimed straight at Queen Elowen and Phoenix Queen Ignara.

He stared at the two queens. A tightly suppressed urgency flashed through his eyes.

"The power you two have... it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Emerald Castle, does it?" the golden figure said, his voice steady only because he was forcing it to be. "If you’re willing to submit to me, I can seize Infernal Primordial Power and flood it into your bodies. You should know how terrifying that power is."

Phoenix Queen Ignara didn’t respond.

Queen Elowen didn’t give him so much as a change in expression.

Infernal Primordial Power was already inside them—and not only that.

More importantly, Ethan had been feeding them absurdly powerful energy resources from the start. They had no reason to bow to a golden figure who’d already been driven into a corner.

The two queens simply raised their hands at the same time.

Behind Phoenix Queen Ignara, Eternal Flame gathered into a vast sea of red-gold fire. In the center of that inferno, the outline of a massive phoenix emerged.

In Queen Elowen’s palm, cold light spread. Extreme ice climbed rapidly along the edge of the flames, and within the fire-sea, ice-blue wings unfurled.

The two powers fused again.

A gigantic phoenix phantom formed in the sky—one half of its wings burning with Eternal Flame, the other half covered in extreme ice. It lowered its head and locked onto the golden figure. When it spread its wings, the surrounding space groaned under the pressure, cracking like glass.

Then the phoenix phantom dove.

The golden figure’s face finally broke.

He let out a furious roar and threw every golden spike he’d condensed.

Countless spikes tore through the heavens, stabbing toward the phoenix phantom from different angles. Each one dragged a bright golden trail, slamming into the wings woven from Eternal Flame and extreme ice like a storm of meteors.

The two attacks collided head-on.

BOOM!

The phoenix phantom and the golden spikes detonated in midair. Violent power swept outward, shaking the world until dense fractures spiderwebbed across the surrounding sky.

Flame, ice, and gold light ripped at each other. For a moment, neither side could completely overwhelm the other. Golden spikes were burned, frozen, and shattered one after another, while the phoenix phantom was slowed layer by layer under the continuous impacts. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

A stalemate.

And right as the golden figure poured all of his attention into that frontal clash—

Phoenix Queen Ignara moved.

Her body turned into a streak of red-gold lightning and slipped out from the phoenix phantom’s flank, skimming along the ragged edge of the chaos. By the time the golden figure realized something was wrong, she was already beside him.

Phoenix Queen Ignara lifted a finger and lightly tapped his forehead.

A pale pink gem was embedded there.

From the start of the fight until now, both Queen Elowen and Phoenix Queen Ignara had been watching it.

Every time the golden figure released his power, that pale pink gem lit up, and the pulse inside it grew stronger along with him. The reason he could maintain that dimensional force at all had a direct connection to the gem.

So Ignara judged it on the spot—

that was his energy core.

Her finger came down gently, with almost no visible force behind it.

But the instant her fingertip touched the pale pink gem, Eternal Flame compressed to an extreme point and drove straight in through that contact. A hairline crack appeared on the gem’s surface.

Then it spread.

In the next breath, the entire pale pink gem shattered into fragments right on the golden figure’s forehead.

The golden figure’s eyes flew wide.

Only now did he truly understand: Queen Elowen and Phoenix Queen Ignara hadn’t been mindlessly trading blows with him.

They’d been watching how his power moved. Tracking where it cycled. Searching for the location of his core the entire time.

And the moment the phoenix phantom had him pinned, they’d delivered the kill.

With his energy core destroyed, the golden figure’s body immediately went slack.

The golden light around him—like a lamp with its fuel cut off—dimmed in an instant. His body stiffened for a heartbeat in midair, then dropped straight down.

Queen Elowen was already beneath him.

She lifted her hand and clenched her fist. Extreme ice surged from her palm and sealed his body in place.

The frost crawled upward from his legs, swallowing his waist, belly, chest, arms, and throat, freezing him solid in midair. The golden figure’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

Phoenix Queen Ignara followed without giving him even a sliver of time.

She pressed down with all her power.

Eternal Flame crashed from above and slammed directly into the golden figure—right onto the body locked inside Elowen’s ice.

The ice didn’t block the fire.

It did the opposite: it pinned him there so tightly the Eternal Flame could punch through him cleanly, with nowhere for him to dodge, nowhere for the impact to bleed off.

His body split apart between fire and ice.

Then it was blasted into shattered grit, scattered into the broken ripples of space.

For a brief moment, the battlefield fell silent.

But after the golden figure died, the void-world beside him didn’t calm down.

Without his power pulling it into shape, countless cracks suddenly appeared along the edge of that emptiness.

They spread outward fast. The void energy inside started to lose control, smashing toward the border between the two worlds like a rising tide. The seam Ethan had forcibly stabilized let out a heavy, tearing groan again—as if it was about to split wide open.