"How can a world like this possibly have a soulless thrall that strong?" The Stoneborn leader’s face turned ugly.
Ethan sneered. "Heh. There’s a lot you don’t know. You wanted as your slave—are you out of your mind?"
He pointed forward. "Dopey. Beat them to death."
The instant the order left his mouth, Dopey launched himself like a cannonball straight into their formation.
"So fast!"
Every Stoneborn’s expression changed. They reacted as one, throwing out skills in a practiced storm.
The ground turned to sucking swamp-mud, trying to lock Dopey in place. Next ca massive teors, slamming down from above, while thick stone pillars surged up and tried to ram him head-on.
These Stoneborn were earth-type ability users—masters of earth-elent skills.
But against the oncoming barrage, Dopey didn’t even flinch. His body was the weapon. He bulldozed straight through.
The swamp terrain might as well have been flat road under his feet. teors smashed into him and shattered instantly, barely slowing him. He kept moving—fast enough to blur.
In a blink, he was in front of one Stoneborn powerhouse.
No tricks. No flourish.
Just a punch.
The Stoneborn’s face went white. Layer after layer of stone barriers popped up in front of him, and thick rock armor ford over his body in an instant. The others threw additional stone shields onto him as backup.
BOOM!
A deafening crack rang out.
Dopey’s fist blew through the stacked shields, smashed through the defenses, and drove into the Stoneborn’s body.
"Pff—"
Blood and shredded organs sprayed out. The man flew backward, hit the ground, and went still.
"—!"
Shock hit the entire group.
"How is that possible?!" soone shouted.
If the first death could be blad on being caught off-guard, this one had been protected by layers of defenses from multiple people—and he still died in one hit.
Earth-type abilities were famous for defense.
And Dopey had just punched straight through it like it was paper.
"Stage S...?" The leader’s face sank.
How the hell did a place like this have a Stage S soulless thrall?
Dopey didn’t care about their panic. After killing one, he pivoted and charged the second.
The leader shouted, voice cutting through the chaos. "Soulless thralls are bound to their master! Kill the master and the thrall becos useless!"
He barked orders to the two beside him. "Gravel! Boulder! Go kill that human. The rest of you—hold this thrall down with !"
"Yes!"
Two Stoneborn peeled off imdiately and sprinted for Ethan. The remaining Stoneborn went all-in on Dopey—not with raw damage, but with control.
Slows. Gravity pressure. Sandstorms. Debuffs stacked on debuffs, anything to drag down Dopey’s montum and buy ti.
Ethan saw the two coming for him, and his expression hardened.
They think I’m the easy target.
"Really think I’m that easy to bully?" he snapped.
Then, under his breath, "I might not be able to beat you... but I can sure as hell run."
He vanished.
Three thousand feet away, Ethan reappeared.
But almost imdiately, the two Stoneborn closed in again.
Ethan’s eyes went wide as he watched one of them take a single step and eat nearly three thousand feet of distance.
"Seriously? You folded the ground?"
There was no ti to stand around being impressed.
Ethan teleported again—clean, decisive.
The two Stoneborn chased, but they were always a fraction late.
Because when it ca to pure movent, nothing beat a spatial-type ability.
The two Stoneborn exchanged a quick look.
Then they split.
One kept chasing Ethan head-on.
The other, while Ethan wasn’t paying attention, dropped straight into the earth and vanished underground.
Ethan, sprinting and blinking through space ahead of them, noticed one of the pursuers was suddenly gone. He frowned.
But there was no ti to think it through. Just keep teleporting. If he could hold out a little longer, once Dopey finished off the rest, they’d win.
He didn’t dare get close to the main battlefield. Too many wide-area skills were going off over there. If he got clipped by even one, he’d be in trouble.
So all he could do was kite them in circles around the outskirts.
After another teleport opened up distance, Ethan pulled a Tier 16 crystal core from his spatial storage ring and tossed it into his mouth. Back-to-back teleports chewed through ntal energy like crazy.
And then—
A hand shot up from underground and clamped onto his ankle.
Ethan’s face changed. He twisted and yanked, putting everything into breaking free, but it didn’t budge.
Teleportation couldn’t bring other people with it. And if you were grabbed or restrained, you couldn’t teleport at all.
That was the weakness of teleportation.
These guys clearly understood spatial abilities. They’d predicted his landing point through the spatial fluctuation... and the second his foot touched down, they pinned him.
"A Tier 19 ant thinks it can escape us?" A head pushed up through the soil, still gripping Ethan’s ankle. "Dream on."
In the sa motion, a spear of rock condensed in the Stoneborn’s other hand and stabbed straight at Ethan’s skull—clean and ruthless, no wasted movent.
"Absolute Stasis!"
Ethan triggered it without hesitation.
The world froze.
He yanked out the poleaxe and brought it down on his own ankle.
Chop.
He severed his own foot.
Then he planted his remaining foot on the Stoneborn’s head—one hard stomp—and vanished in another teleport the instant he could.
Ethan was brutal to his enemies.
He was just as brutal to himself.
That Stoneborn wasn’t even the strongest of the bunch, but he was still Tier 26. Ethan couldn’t gamble on being able to cut the guy’s hand off in one strike. If he failed, he died.
So he didn’t gamble.
He cut off his own foot instead.
Henry’s ability could already regenerate severed limbs. Later, he’d just grow it back.
Simple in theory.
But in practice... how many people could do it that decisively?
Less than a second later, ti snapped back to normal.
Gravel stared at the severed foot in his hand, utterly blank.
"What the hell...? How did he still get away?"
Boulder arrived a heartbeat later. A mont ago he’d been frozen midair—he just hadn’t known it.
"I don’t know," Gravel said, still stunned. "I was holding him. He... he must’ve cut his own foot off and escaped. But I didn’t see him cut it. At all."
Boulder frowned. He’d been watching too—and he hadn’t seen it either.
"You also got stepped on," Boulder said, eyeing Gravel’s face.
Gravel blinked. "What?"
Boulder pointed. There was a clear shoeprint stamped across Gravel’s cheek.
"What—?!" Gravel’s eyes bulged.
"Explains why my face felt weird," he muttered, shock deepening. "How did he do that?"
Getting stepped on without even realizing it was insane.
Boulder’s expression tightened. "It might be... a space-ti ability."
"—!"
Both of them went cold.
From far off, their leader’s furious voice bood over the chaos.
"What are you two doing?! Killing a Tier 19—how is it taking you this long?!"
They jolted like soone had dumped ice water down their backs. Only then did the urgency slam back into them.
They took off after Ethan again.
But after getting burned once, Ethan wasn’t about to let them touch him a second ti. He didn’t even let his feet hit the ground anymore—he just kept blinking through the air with teleport after teleport.
It drained ntal energy like crazy, but he didn’t have a choice.
Teeth clenched, he started burning through what he had left—dozens of Tier 18 crystal cores, one after another, just to keep his ntal energy topped up.
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