Queen Elowen and Phoenix Queen Ignara didn’t hesitate.

They turned at the same time and unleashed everything they had.

Eternal Flame spread across the top of the rupture. Extreme ice sealed the lower edges. The two powers crossed and pressed down toward the border between the worlds, trying to plug the section of space that had started to collapse.

But this time, the pressure was heavier than before.

Their power was terrifying, but with only the two of them, there was no way they could hold spatial stability for long.

Cracks multiplied across the void-world’s surface. The gap where the two worlds collided began to thrum with a deep, grinding vibration.

Before long, the firelight on Phoenix Queen Ignara’s body grew less steady than it had been, and some of the color drained from Queen Elowen’s face.

Their auras started to sag.

Not far away, Desert Queen Kaelira and Queen Seraphine saw it and immediately rushed toward the boundary.

Kaelira’s power rose from below—heavy, thick, and unyielding—pressing down on the trembling edge of space like a massive weight.

At the same time, Seraphine released her own power, forcing a swelling crack on the other side to seal back shut.

The strength of the four queens wove together—flame, ice, sand-colored energy, and Seraphine’s power spreading as one—finally stabilizing the seam between the two worlds, if only barely.

Rumble—!

But the situation in the distance didn’t improve at all.

The dimensional space in the sky was still expanding.

Spatial corridors continued to stretch outward, and the fleets emerging from them only grew more numerous.

Warship shadows rolled over the cloud layer. Cannons and energy cores lit up one after another. Layered waves of pressure stacked until it felt like the entire battlefield was being shoved back toward the brink of collapse.

If this continued, the outcome wouldn’t bear imagining.

Ethan hovered in midair, staring at those ever-widening spatial corridors, his brow drawing tighter by the second.

Too many civilizations had descended on Elysion at once.

The sky was carved into pieces by different fleets’ shadows. Warship energy cores flared in rapid succession. Unfamiliar pressures pushed in from every direction—some as heavy as mountains, some so sharp they seemed to slice through the cloud layer, and some carrying The Infernal Abyss’s signature chill and violent madness.

And the expert standing across from him still hadn’t withdrawn his wind-element power.

Blue-black wind blades spun around the man, packed so densely it looked like a sideways rainstorm made of knives. Every blade that shot out left a thin cut in space.

More and more of those cuts accumulated. Warship fragments, scattered energy, broken shields—everything got dragged in, then shaved into even finer debris.

Ethan slowly drew in a breath and eased back half a step.

White lightning brightened within him, sliding along his shoulders and arms before pooling into his palm.

The surrounding air let out a low, pressured hum. A few floating scraps of warship metal beneath him twitched under the pull of his electricity and started drifting toward his position.

He was about to strike again.

But right as the power reached the edge of release, Ethan suddenly sensed something wrong.

The white lightning pouring out of him wasn’t expanding outward in the usual, straightforward way.

It was... responding.

Being tugged—faintly—by the Infernal Abyss power spilling off his opponent, as if the two were connected by an invisible thread.

The sensation was subtle at first. A slight drift in the glow in his palm.

Then heat flared deep in his chest.

Ethan glanced down.

Before he could figure out what was happening, several snow-white energy vortices opened on their own beside him.

They appeared without warning, rotating slowly right up against his shoulder, in front of his chest, and behind his back.

Fine threads of white lightning crackled along the rims. The moment they formed, they started dragging in the scattered Infernal Abyss power in the air.

The other man’s wind blades had barely gotten close before the vortices tore them apart—swallowing them whole along with the Infernal Primordial Power threaded inside—and feeding it straight into Ethan. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Ethan’s eyes sharpened.

He hadn’t activated this.

But those snow-white vortices were undeniably coming from his body, and they were devouring the enemy’s power at a terrifying speed.

The expert across from him noticed instantly.

He was still trying to direct his wind blades to keep slicing space open, but the moment his wind-element power left his body, those snow-white vortices yanked it away.

At first, it was only the outer layer of his power being stripped.

Then, fast—too fast—Infernal Primordial Power from deeper inside him started leaking out uncontrollably.

His expression flipped.

His body withered like a punctured skin bag, shrinking in on itself as the aura propping up his storm collapsed in chunks. The blue-black wind blades, cut off from their source, shattered in midair—first breaking into fragments, then getting swallowed completely by the white vortices.

Ethan watched it happen, the shock in his eyes turning into pure excitement.

If his body could absorb this kind of power now, there was no reason to drag things out.

White lightning detonated under his feet. He punched through the zone of broken wind blades and appeared right in front of the man. The expert tried to retreat, but with his power being dragged away by the vortices, his movement lagged—just a beat too slow.

Ethan locked a hand onto his shoulder.

His five fingers pressed down, and white lightning drilled through his palm into the man’s body.

A stronger pull erupted immediately.

Infernal Primordial Power was ripped out in sheets, surging from the shoulder through the chest and limbs, flooding straight into Ethan.

The expert’s body shook violently. Muscles visibly shriveled. The blue-black wind-element power was sucked out until there was nothing left.

"That’s impossible!"

He grit his teeth and roared, but his voice was already trembling, cracking at the edges.

"What I have is the purest Infernal Primordial Power—how can a tiny human like you possibly absorb it?"

Ethan stared at him coldly.

Those words didn’t slow his hand.

They only confirmed everything.

The power inside this man really did come from The Infernal Abyss—and for Ethan now, it was no longer something untouchable.

"Pure?"

Ethan gave a short, contemptuous snort and raised his other hand.

His index finger tapped the man’s forehead.

White lightning stabbed in through the fingertip—

then detonated deep inside his skull.

The expert didn’t even get to finish his last scream. His entire body was torn apart from the inside out, flesh and residual energy bursting into a cloud of shredded gore and light. Most of it was immediately swallowed by the snow-white vortices hanging around Ethan.

Ethan withdrew his hand. The vortices beside him slowly faded away.

He turned and looked up at the sky, which had become completely chaotic.

The civilizations emerging from those spatial corridors weren’t part of a single faction.

Their warship designs, energy signatures, and formation habits were all different. Some fleets, the moment they showed their bows, swung their cannon lines and locked onto enemies appearing from other corridors.

Several unfamiliar civilizations clearly had grudges with each other. They didn’t even bother figuring out what was happening on Elysion—

they just started fighting.

Energy fire swept from east to west. Massive warships slammed shields against each other. Multiple fleets opened up near the mouths of the spatial corridors, trading volleys point-blank. Explosions stacked layer over layer, shaking already-unstable space into even worse turbulence.