Before Dreadok could steady himself, Ethan was already right in his face.
Translucent lightning coiled around Ethan's arm. Violet runes streamed from the wings on his back all the way into his palm.
He clamped a hand around Dreadok's throat.
His fingers tightened. Lightning drilled down through Dreadok's neck and into his body, pinning that fire-aspect power before it could regroup.
Dreadok's pupils contracted. Both hands snapped up on instinct, grabbing Ethan's wrist.
Too late.
Ethan dragged him straight down out of the sky—like a meteor wrapped in thunder—slamming him into the mountain ground outside the city.
The first hill was punched through by Dreadok's back. The whole thing blew apart from the middle, rock shrapnel spraying outward.
The second hill was shaved flat by the shockwave, the earth collapsing into a massive crater.
The third was worse—Ethan drove Dreadok straight into the mountain's belly. Translucent lightning erupted from inside the rock, shaking the entire hill into rubble.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
With every impact, the fissure at Dreadok's waist widened another notch.
The breach Ethan had forced open kept spewing crimson aura. Fire-aspect energy that had once circulated smoothly inside him now turned into a runaway flood, crashing through flesh and energy channels in chaotic surges.
Ethan kept his grip on Dreadok's throat and hauled him up out of the crushed rock pit.
"In my eyes," Ethan said, voice low—but clear enough that everyone around could hear it, "you're just trash."
His gaze stayed cold.
"And you still dared come here to fight over this world's mineral energy."
The translucent lightning on Ethan's arm flared again, its glow reflecting across Dreadok's twisted face.
"You were begging to die."
Dreadok's pupils blew wide.
He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but the moment he tried to move his energy, the wound at his waist erupted with another surge of crimson aura. Before a single word could come out, Ethan's fist came down again.
Same spot.
Right into the abdominal wound.
Translucent lightning, violet runes, and Infernal Abyss lightning poured into the fissure together, driving up through the torn gap toward his chest.
Dreadok's chest bulged violently. Deep inside his flesh, his energy core shook like it was about to crack itself in half trying to stabilize his body.
Ethan's other hand stabbed into Dreadok's chest.
His fingers closed around the violently glowing energy core—and he ripped.
Crack!
The core was torn out by force.
With its restraint gone, the raging energy inside Dreadok detonated all at once.
Crimson firelight erupted from his chest, waist, shoulders, and spine in simultaneous jets. At the same time, translucent lightning severed his energy channels from the inside out.
Dreadok's body couldn't withstand that internal-and-external tearing.
He exploded into countless chunks, scattering across the collapsing mountain terrain.
His soul shot out of the shattered flesh—barely taking shape before it could flee—
Only to slam into the translucent lightning net Ethan had already laid out.
Electric arcs laced up around it, binding the soul-body, then compressing inward.
Dreadok thrashed wildly inside the net, but he didn't even manage a full scream before the lightning shredded him into fragments.
Silence held for a single breath.
Ethan stood in the middle of the ruined ground, dragging in a hard, heavy breath.
In his hand, he still held the energy core he'd ripped from Dreadok's chest. Crimson firelight clung to its surface, and within it a strange fire-aspect force rolled slowly, like molten tide trapped behind glass.
Even with Dreadok dead, the weight of power inside that core was still terrifying.
Ethan glanced at the core once, then put it away.
Up in the sky, the enemy army stood frozen.
A moment ago, they'd been sure Dreadok's arrival would flip everything. He was a peak 35 Tier expert—the reason they'd dared to march on this city in the first place.
But they'd just watched Ethan grab him by the throat, smash him into the ground, rip his energy core out by hand… and then grind his soul into nothing.
That kind of shock made them hesitate even to run.
Ethan didn't give them time to recover.
He rose back into the air. Behind him, the huge violet wings snapped open with a heavy beat. Golden runes ignited along the feather-edges, and violet energy became a shockwave that swept across the sky, crashing down toward the nearest ranks.
The front few dozen enemies didn't even get their shields up.
The violet pressure rolled over them and crushed straight through their bodies.
Flesh, armor, weapons, and energy cores shattered at the same time, bursting into a thick blood mist that rained across the air.
That was it.
The rest finally broke.
Some turned and fled. Some dropped in terror toward the ground. Some tried to tear open spatial rifts and escape the battlefield.
But their auras were already weak, their formation was in pieces, and that earlier momentum—when they'd been confident enough to bully a whole city—was gone.
Ethan's eyes were ice.
He had no intention of letting them go.
His aura flared again. Translucent lightning and violet energy condensed in midair into beam after beam of concentrated light.
They shot outward in all directions like a storm, pouring into the enemy ranks.
Each beam detonated on impact—ripping shields apart, punching through bodies, then spreading leftover force into the people nearby.
The sky turned into a slaughterhouse.
At the same time, Emerald Castle launched the full assault.
Fallen Star Guard cut in from the flanks. Powered combat armor troops dove from above. Temporary arrays set by the goblin engineers sealed off the retreat routes.
Korvath's people surged out from the walls too, coordinating with Emerald Castle to close the ring and trap what was left.
Screams, explosions, metal-on-metal impacts—everything hit at once.
It didn't take long.
The army that had come to steal the city's mineral resources was wiped out completely.
A handful of stragglers managed to flee—only to be intercepted by the thunder net overhead and reduced to charred wreckage before they got far.
Silence returned to the battlefield.
Ethan hovered in midair, sweeping his gaze over the energy cores drifting around him. For the first time in a while, satisfaction finally showed on his face.
Most of these cores had come from enemy experts. Some still carried a fire-aspect residue. Others stored strange, signature energies from different Castles.
Ethan lifted his hand and made a grasping motion.
Translucent lightning spread into a wide net, sweeping up every nearby core and dragging them in.
One after another, the cores dropped into his spatial reserves. Their internal power was sealed for now, waiting to be processed later.
But right as Ethan gathered the last batch—
The sky in the distance suddenly shuddered.
A vast aura pressed down from far away.
The air outside the city, which had only just calmed, turned heavy again. The clouds on the horizon were slammed apart as something enormous tore through them, charging toward this place at terrifying speed.
It hadn't even arrived yet, and the force it carried had already carved a long, warped scar across the sky.
Ethan lifted his head, his gaze sinking.
That presence…
Was monstrously dangerous.
