A flash of excitent—sothing Ethan had never felt before—cut through his eyes.
Resources like this. Expansion at this speed.
For the first ti, he could actually taste it: the possibility of controlling the world.
But—
right when everyone was drowning in the rush of getting stronger, sothing went wrong.
"THUD!"
A muffled, bone-deep impact ca from far below.
Then the rumbling started—one after another, rolling without end.
The ground began to shake.
Cracks spidered across the rock along the tunnel's edge. The previously steady flow of energy turned chaotic. Even the Dark Abyss aura in the air snapped into a frenzy, violent and irritable.
Ethan's head jerked up.
His instincts scread a warning the instant it started.
The next second—
the earth exploded.
A massive figure blasted out from the deep earth veins, forcing his way up through stone and soil.
It was a "soldier" of absurd size. His fra was humanlike, but it had been tempered by so higher-tier power to the extre. His muscles looked like cast tal. Every step he took crushed the ground, collapsing it under his weight.
And the most chilling part—
the mont he appeared, all surrounding energy moved on its own and gathered toward him.
Like subjects bowing to their king.
The Dark Abyss power stopped raging and instead flowed into him in perfect order, as if he were a piece of the abyss itself.
"Who are you?"
The giant spoke, his voice low and crushing.
"Why are you here?"
As he spoke, the energy inside him surged higher and higher. The air around him buckled slightly, like it might implode at any mont—an attack ready to erupt.
Ethan's nerves pulled tight.
He took a step back, drawing on his power in one smooth motion. White lightning wrapped around him in multiple circling arcs, layering into a defensive structure that could detonate instantly.
"Then what about you?" he shot back coldly. "Hiding in the deepest part of the Dark Abyss—what the hell are you?"
The giant's gaze settled on him.
In that instant, his pupils tightened.
"You… killed Zerathrax?"
His tone shifted.
"Why is his aura… on you?"
Ethan's chest clenched.
He didn't answer.
He compressed his power even further, ready for a sudden strike.
But the giant clearly wasn't interested in talking anymore.
The next second, his energy slamd together.
All the Dark Abyss power pouring into him gathered at his chest, forming a gigantic vortex. It spun, compressed, layered on itself again and again—dragging even the surrounding space into the rotation.
Then—
he thrust forward.
That vortex launched like a released abyss core, roaring toward Ethan with a montum that wanted to swallow everything.
Ethan's pupils shrank hard.
He retreated on instinct and hurled the condensed energy sphere in his hand straight out.
The two forces collided in midair.
"BOOM—!"
The explosion didn't bloom outward.
It collapsed inward.
At the point of contact, shockwaves ford rings of spatial distortion. The surrounding ravine was torn apart. The ground split into countless bottomless fissures, like the whole area was being disassembled piece by piece.
But the result—
made everyone's heart sink.
The giant was almost completely unaffected.
His power was terrifyingly stable, far beyond any normal definition of Tier 34. Compared to him, Erald Castle's attacks looked laughably small.
Ethan's breathing turned sharp.
He knew it clearly: a head-on fight—there was no chance.
Right as the situation teetered toward disaster—
a familiar figure rose quietly into view.
Lily.
She didn't charge up. She didn't posture.
She just appeared in front of the giant.
Then—
she raised a hand.
One light tap of a finger.
The motion looked casual, almost careless, but the instant it connected, an unimaginable force detonated. White lightning compressed to its absolute limit at her fingertip, then burst out in a razor-thin, insanely concentrated impact.
"BOOM!"
The giant's body jolted violently.
He was slamd straight down into the ground, his enormous fra smashing the earth and throwing up a wave of shattered rock and surging energy.
For a heartbeat, the air went silent.
Lily floated in midair, her expression flat and cold.
"To , you don't even count as an insect."
Her voice wasn't loud, but the pressure behind it was impossible to ignore.
"Hand over this world's Primordial Core."
The giant's pupils contracted violently.
His internal energy wavered. The Dark Abyss power that had been flowing into him so obediently started to tremble and scatter.
"You… you're from The Infernal Abyss?"
For the first ti, fear crept into his voice.
Lily didn't answer.
She just lifted her hand.
Power gathered again.
The next second, her strike ca down.
White lightning hamred into the giant's chest like a siege mallet, blasting a web of cracks across the impact point. The fractures spread fast, faintly reaching into the internal energy structure beneath.
"I'm not saying this a second ti," she said coldly. "Hand it over—or die."
The giant broke.
Faced with that kind of overwhelming force, he didn't have a shred of courage left to resist.
Trembling, he reached into his own body and pulled out an embedded gem. It gave off a weak but steady glow, and inside it, sothing like an information lattice looked sealed away.
"Th-this… this is the guide…" His voice was nearly falling apart. "The Primordial Cores' locations… they're all in there… please—don't kill …"
Lily took the gem.
She glanced down at it.
In the next instant, the structure inside activated. A three-dinsional map slowly unfolded in the air, marking multiple energy nodes with crystal clarity.
The corner of her mouth lifted.
"Nice."
She said it softly.
Then—
she raised her hand again.
This ti, there wasn't the slightest hesitation.
White lightning erupted and speared straight through the giant's chest. The force was precise and absolute, shattering his internal energy structure completely.
The giant's body locked up.
Eyes wide, he stared at Lily in disbelief.
"Y-you… you said… you'd let go…"
His voice faded thinner and thinner.
Lily tilted her head slightly.
"I said I'd let you go," she replied evenly.
"But they"—her gaze slid past him, toward the rear—"didn't."
"And besides…" She smiled faintly.
"Letting an energy source at your level walk away would be a waste."
The giant's mind still hung in that stunned, unreal mont.
Like he still couldn't accept he'd already lost. The agony of his pierced chest and the collapse of his energy frawork left him with a brief, fatal pause—his body stalling out at the worst possible ti.
And in that instant, Ethan was already rushing in with Erald Castle's army.
What followed wasn't a "siege" in any traditional sense.
It was a looting.
Erald Castle's people sward up the giant's shattered chest, shoulders, and spine, clinging to him like predators diving for the heart of their prey.
They didn't waste a single breath. They imdiately ran their cultivation, their abilities—whatever they had—and started ripping energy out of him with savage efficiency.
Dark Abyss power had an almost submissive affinity toward this giant in the first place, and his body was like a natural energy furnace.
Now, with tens of thousands of siphons and pulls activating at the sa ti, the vast ocean of energy inside him visibly drained at a horrifying speed.
The giant's breathing turned heavy and ragged.
His massive chest heaved. The pressure that had been able to suppress the entire field weakened noticeably in re monts.
Worse, he couldn't stop the loss—he could barely even manage sothing as simple as lifting an arm. Every movent beca slow, clumsy, forced.
He finally understood.
He was being eaten.
Not flesh and blood.
Sothing far worse—his power, his life, the foundation of his very existence—was being peeled out of him layer by layer by this army that had burst in from nowhere.
Instinct kicked in. He began to struggle, trying to force out one last eruption, one last attack to shatter everyone attached to him.
But it was already too late.
Before the last scraps of strength he could still command had a chance to truly gather, his entire system hit empty first.
It felt like an ocean that had been roaring a heartbeat ago suddenly drying up all at once—leaving behind nothing but a huge, hollow shell.
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