Chapter 949: The Shard in the Brow
Morzan stepped into the light gate and vanished, and with him the entire vision collapsed. The endless white space dissolved as if it had never existed, leaving no echo, no afterimage, nothing at all.
Ethan’s consciousness snapped back into his body with a jolt.
The first thing he saw was a bald head hovering inches from his face. Smooth, shiny, and far too close for comfort. There was no need to guess who it was.
"What are you doing?" Ethan blurted out as he instinctively leaned back.
Vasuki froze, eyes widening as realization hit him. The next second, he screamed at the top of his lungs. "AHHH! GIVE ME BACK MY DIVINE SHARD!" He lunged forward like a rabid animal, hands clawing straight for Ethan’s face.
Ethan reacted without thinking. He leaned back further and swung his hand in a clean, brutal arc toward the incoming monk.
Vasuki’s eyes flickered with surprise as he attempted to phase-shift away, that lightning-fast movement technique he was so proud of activating on instinct. But Ethan’s backhand was something else entirely, a motion refined through countless real fights rather than flashy techniques. His palm curved mid-swing, adjusting to Vasuki’s trajectory, faster than even Annihilating Lightning. Unless Vasuki completely escaped the range of his arm, Ethan knew the hit was unavoidable.
Overconfident as always, Vasuki tried to dodge while reaching forward at the same time, clearly intending to grab Ethan’s face even as he evaded.
He misjudged badly.
SMACK.
The sound was sharp and satisfying, echoing through the cavern as the little bald monk was sent tumbling through the air. Ethan’s hand lingered where it was, the impact still buzzing through his palm. He had aimed for Vasuki’s cheek but ended up striking the smooth dome of his head instead. Even so, the force was overwhelming. Vasuki’s small body spun wildly, phase-shifting several times in rapid succession just to shed the momentum before he finally managed to stabilize himself.
Ethan felt a flicker of excitement. The guy was fast, undeniably so, but at close range speed stopped mattering. Within arm’s reach, that kind of evasive movement was meaningless. If you were there, you were taking the hit.
That only made one thing more suspicious.
Why had the little monk been so desperate to grab his face?
Ethan frowned and reached up, fingers brushing his forehead. His breath caught.
"Son of a..."
Cold and smooth. Perfectly shaped. Something was embedded directly in the center of his brow, fused seamlessly to his skull. He checked internally, probing with his senses, and the answer came back immediately. Bone and shard had become one.
"I grew a horn?" he muttered.
Vasuki had stopped attacking altogether. He stood a short distance away, rubbing his head and staring at Ethan with a look of pure disbelief, as if he still could not process the fact that he had been hit at all.
"You... you... YOU!" Vasuki trembled, pointing at Ethan, his entire body shaking with rage, but the words refused to come.
"Don’t you you you me," Ethan snapped. "You think I wanted this thing?"
He tried to pry the shard loose. It felt like glass under his fingers and did not move even a fraction. The memory of the vision returned to him then. Every single person on that battlefield had possessed one, embedded in their forehead just like this. So the name had been literal after all. A Divine Shard. A key to godhood.
But why him?
The pieces began to connect. That vision explained how Morzan had returned to Earth. There was no need for further explanation. Morzan had come through the light gate, returned to Earth, created Ethereal, chosen Ethan, and successfully reincarnated himself. This shard was likely the anchor, the bridge between worlds, the key that made it all possible.
If the battlefield could be shifted from Earth to that other realm, could Earth be spared its impending catastrophe?
The thought should have inspired hope, but instead unease crept in. The so-called gods he had seen, the monkey, the fire-man, the water-man, were legendary existences. The monkey was still chained beneath heavenly thunder. And the army of the Divine Realm had been terrifying. After seeing them, Ethan’s confidence wavered. Morzan believed he could save Earth, but from what he had just witnessed, even the weakest black-armored soldier might turn him into cannon fodder.
What exactly made him special?
The doubt lingered, heavy and unwelcome.
Vasuki finally spoke again, his voice strained and confused. "Why... why didn’t you get struck by the Annihilating Tribulation?"
That, more than anything else, had shaken him.
"What’s an Annihilating Tribulation?" Ethan asked. He had endured a lightning tribulation before and barely survived it. Even now, the memory still crawled into his nightmares.
"It’s..." Vasuki began, then stopped abruptly. His lips continued moving, but no sound came out. He tried again, growing more frantic, but it was the same result.
"You mute or something?" Ethan said flatly. "Speak louder."
Receiving no answer, he turned away and looked toward Hayes and the others. "You can leave from here. What are you going to do?"
"We’re not leaving just yet," Hayes replied after a moment’s thought. "Since we can get out now, I’m going back to the first layer. I need to tell everyone what happened here. After that, we’ll come back and leave together."
She was still thinking about her people. Ethan nodded in understanding. "When you leave, you’ll end up on Earth. Come find me. Ask around, you’ll know who I am."
He fully intended to make waves once he returned, and he had no doubt his name would spread quickly. Hayes seemed to sense that confidence and nodded without hesitation. Vale and the others said their farewells, glancing up at the opening in the sky with excitement written all over their faces before following Hayes back the way they had come.
They were finally getting out.
Ethan spared Vasuki one last glance. The monk was still standing there, frozen in a mix of confusion and anger. Ethan pushed off the ground.
BOOM.
The earth fractured beneath him, cracks spreading outward like a spiderweb as his body shot upward toward the hole in the sky. Light swallowed him as he passed through. He expected to emerge deep beneath the ocean.
Instead, he found himself ten thousand meters in the air.
The hole was gone. The Divine Sea Temple was nowhere to be seen. Yet something had changed. His senses reached outward and caught on a faint spatial anomaly, something he had been completely unable to detect before. The Divine Sea Trial had not taken him to the highest layer, but it had given him plenty. His Ethereal character had leveled up, his perception had expanded, and now he carried a Divine Shard embedded in his skull.
The ocean stretched endlessly below, glittering under the night sky. He checked his wrist as his control system pinpointed his location. Land was not far. The US lay to the west.
He did not wait for Vasuki. Shifting into Swift Flight Form, he accelerated at maximum speed, tearing through the air toward the west.
He had barely settled into his flight when Vasuki appeared beside him. Walking. Casually. Matching his speed with ease, as if he were strolling down a quiet street.
Ethan’s jaw tightened in frustration. He had a clear head start, yet the monk caught up in seconds and did not even seem to be trying. Keeping pace with supersonic flight while walking was absurd. What kind of movement technique allowed that?
While flying, Ethan tried contacting Victor and the others but got nothing. The mech location signals were gone from his system entirely. Worse still, Shatterstar was unreachable. He sent call after call, but the familiar mechanical voice never answered.
Something had gone very wrong while he was gone.
At least the watch system itself still functioned. GPS remained intact. Locking in his heading, Ethan continued west without slowing.
Half a day later, the sky had turned pitch black as he reached the Ironvale Mountains, the hidden entrance to the Silverwood family’s territory. His heart sank immediately. The massive iron chain that marked the entrance had been severed with a clean, precise cut. The entrance itself was gone.
"Did they get attacked?" he murmured. "Or did the territory seal itself?"
But if it sealed itself, why cut the chain?
He scanned the mountains carefully, spreading his senses as wide as he could. There were no signs of battle, no lingering energy fluctuations, no traces of people. Only ordinary wildlife moved through the forest. After a thorough search, he circled back.
Vasuki was squatting on the ground, holding something in his hand.
Ethan’s senses brushed past it without detecting anything, and that alone set off alarm bells. His eyes widened as he rushed forward and snatched the object away.
"You! Stealing again!" Vasuki shouted angrily, but he immediately backed off. He was far too close to Ethan’s arm, and the memory of that backhand was still painfully fresh.
Ethan ignored him completely. His attention was fixed on what he held.
A single white feather.
It carried no energy signature whatsoever, which explained why his senses had missed it. Yet that absence made it far more disturbing. Any normal creature would leave some trace behind. There was only one exception he knew of.
The bird-people. Angels.
When they attacked, the feathers that fell after their strikes left nothing behind at all.
