Ethan didn’t call it out.

He pulled a blue crystal from his person and rubbed his thumb lightly over its surface. Blue light flowed inside, but it didn’t release right away.

Then he turned to the old man.

"Sir, if I’m not mistaken... the one you’re really worried about is Korvath inside that city."

The smile on the old man’s face froze for a beat.

He stared at Ethan. The blood-red gem in his forehead flickered once.

"You know him?"

Ethan nodded, his tone flat.

"When I first came to this world, I heard his name. Supposedly a fierce general."

His gaze went back to the distant city.

"But what he can really do... that still needs to be tested."

The old man’s excitement nearly spilled out of his eyes.

"So you can kill him?"

Ethan didn’t answer.

He only tightened his grip around the blue crystal, fingers closing—

Crack.

The crystal shattered in his palm.

The blue light didn’t explode outward. Instead, it turned into countless hair-thin energy threads that slipped through his fingers and vanished into the air. The next instant, bone-white lightning wrapped Ethan’s body, and he became a streak of electricity, shooting straight toward the city.

The old man stood where he was, watching Ethan fly off, his tongue slowly sliding across the corner of his mouth.

He’d been worried Ethan wouldn’t risk his neck for him so easily.

Now it seemed he’d worried for nothing.

As long as you dangled mines and Primordial Cores big enough, the other side could be led around by the nose too. Once Emerald Castle handled the problem in Korvath’s little city, everything the old man needed to do afterward would get a whole lot smoother.

But the old man didn’t know the blue crystal Ethan had crushed wasn’t some simple energy tool.

It was a message transmitter.

The instant it broke, Ethan’s order traveled along those energy threads and landed in the ears of every key member of the Emerald Castle army.

Full alert. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Be ready to go to war with the old man’s people at any time.

Feylora stood at the front of the formation, her eyes cooling.

The Powered Combat Armor units didn’t flare their cores outward, but their systems quietly entered preheat. The Fallen Star Guard shifted without a sound, adjusting positions until the old man’s army sat neatly inside their striking range.

The old man was still staring at the city, completely unaware of the tiny changes rippling through the formations behind him.

By then, Ethan had already landed outside the city.

A protective barrier surrounded it, half-transparent, its surface crawling with fine, dense patterns. It didn’t look especially intimidating, but it was incredibly stable—like it was tied directly into the ore veins underground.

Ethan didn’t crash through. He lifted his hand and pressed his palm against the barrier.

The shield trembled lightly.

The bone-white lightning didn’t destroy it. It thinned into a stream of tiny data-pulses and seeped into the city along the barrier’s patterns.

Ethan compressed a huge amount of information into it—the old man’s army, this so-called cooperation, the pressure building outside, and his judgment of their "alliance."

The message spread through the barrier and quickly reached the castle within.

Not long after, a powerful aura rose from the city.

The air above the gate tore open. A man shot out from inside, landing on the inner side of the barrier.

His presence was steady and sharp, like a blade kept sheathed for too long. Several guards rushed up behind him, but none of them dared move past his position.

Korvath stood on the other side of the barrier, his gaze locked on Ethan.

He didn’t attack right away.

First he looked past Ethan at the two armies gathered out on the plain. Then his eyes dropped to the hand Ethan had pressed against the shield, and his brows slowly drew together.

"Who the hell are you?"

Korvath’s voice was low, but it still carried cleanly through the barrier.

"And why would you tell us something this important?"

Ethan spread his hands, not a trace of nerves on his face.

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the forces floating on the far side of the plain. From a distance, with the glow of those blood-red crystals tangled together with the Emerald Castle formation’s energy, it really did look like two allied armies standing as one.

"Those shameless bastards want to team up with me and wipe you out."

Ethan looked back at Korvath, his tone so casual it could’ve been about the weather.

"But I took one look and figured you’re not bothering anyone. People in this city seem to be living just fine. So I changed my mind. Instead of working for that old freak... I’d rather work with you and kill them."

Korvath’s eyes widened.

He stared at Ethan, then looked through the barrier toward the pressure in the sky—two armies packed too close together, their energy ripples overlapping. From the outside, you really couldn’t tell where one side ended and the other began.

"Your armies are already merged."

Korvath’s voice stayed heavy, his eyes still wary.

"How do we tell them apart?"

Ethan gave a short laugh.

He didn’t bother overexplaining. He only flipped his palm up, and another blue gem appeared in his hand. Fine threads of light swam inside it, like an eye compressed into crystal.

Crack.

Ethan closed his fingers, crushing the blue gem.

In the next instant, the Emerald Castle army—quiet and disciplined just a heartbeat earlier—moved.

Powered Combat Armor cores lit up all at once, and a wave of brightness detonated from the front ranks. The Fallen Star Guard pivoted in midair, their spearhead no longer aimed at the city. Instead, it cut on a slant, driving straight into the old man’s army.

At the same time, the goblin engineering teams triggered the mobile arrays they’d already laid out. Multiple energy barriers rose from the flanks, slicing off the enemy’s retreat.

The sky’s pressure changed in a blink.

One moment it was a "joint force."

The next, it was an ambush.

The old man’s face twisted.

He stood in the center of his formation, the blood-red gem in his forehead flaring violently—yet his body locked up in that same instant.

He never would’ve imagined Emerald Castle would flip the table the second they hit the battlefield. And they flipped it so cleanly, so decisively, without even the courtesy of a warning.

Korvath froze too.

Switching formations on the eve of battle, betraying a brand-new alliance, turning your blade around on the spot—any war, any battlefield, that kind of move was taboo.

Armies ran on trust. Alliances needed order. A commander didn’t just change targets on a whim in the middle of a campaign.

But Ethan did it anyway.

And no one in Emerald Castle hesitated.

It was like they’d been waiting for this order all along. The moment that blue gem shattered, every movement snapped into place with terrifying precision.

Ethan looked at Korvath through the barrier and lifted an eyebrow.

"Buddy, my people are already swinging."

He raised a hand, pointing at the enemy formation being carved open.

"You’re not seriously gonna stand there and watch, are you?"