The mont the fight was truly over, Ethan moved—almost instantly.
Lily was still standing in the center of the collapsed ground. At her feet lay the shattered corpse of the bird, and in her hand she held that snow-white energy crystal.
Her back was still straight, but the aura around her kept tightening and shrinking, like sothing being pulled inward. It was obvious that the battle had burned her strength down to the last drop.
"You okay?" Ethan landed beside her, his voice dropping without him even aning to. "That thing… was it from The Infernal Abyss too?"
Lily didn't answer right away.
She just let out a low sigh, like she was exhaling sothing she'd kept bottled up for a long ti. Then she slowly straightened, glanced down at the crystal in her hand—and without even a hint of hesitation, pressed it straight into her chest.
The next second, her body began to turn transparent.
Not disappearing—changing. She was rapidly shifting into a kind of soul-state. Her whole form condensed into an intensely concentrated silhouette of energy, and then, like a wisp of white smoke being sucked away by the wind, she shot directly into Ethan's body.
Ethan didn't stop her.
He understood exactly what was happening. After her energy hit rock bottom, Lily had no choice but to return to her host state. She didn't have the strength left to maintain a physical form outside anymore—so for now, she could only cling to his body and recover.
At a ti like this, Ethan didn't have room to press for answers.
"Everyone, listen up." He turned quickly, his voice calm and decisive. "Take everything we can from the Dark Abyss. Everything."
Back when they'd first entered this region, he'd already used the system to run a basic scan of the entire Dark Abyss.
The system's conclusion had been crystal clear—this wasn't so normal underground world. It was a high-tier independent spatial structure.
A standard space orb wasn't even close to enough to pack up the main frawork of a place like this.
More importantly, on so level, this place connected to both Hell and The Infernal Abyss at the sa ti. Its spatial stability was far beyond anything in ordinary zones.
Which ant the real prize wasn't "taking the whole space." It was stripping out the most valuable parts inside it—the core energy, supplies, and those dense resource nodes.
No one hesitated. They scattered imdiately.
So kept using the lingering energy here to summon their subordinate legions. Others chose the simpler route—absorbing the high-concentration power scattered around them and forcing it straight into their bodies.
After nonstop battles back to back, they all understood one thing: in a place like this, even a sliver of extra energy could turn into an absolute advantage.
Ethan raised a hand and constructed a massive spatial sphere.
It hovered in midair, its interior unfolding layer by layer like a folded-up energy warehouse.
He didn't waste ti. He swept up the most valuable core energy sources nearby—gems, remnant energy cores from wreckage, high-density crystallized masses—and pulled them all into it.
In no ti at all, the richest, most essential chunk of the Dark Abyss's resources had been cleaned out.
But just as everyone was getting ready to withdraw—
Sothing changed outside the canyon.
The first thing they heard was an extrely dense scraping sound.
Then the whole ground began to tremble slightly. It wasn't the heavy, singular quake of one giant beast approaching. It was the synchronized advance of an entire army—numbers so large they made the earth itself shiver.
Ethan's head snapped up.
In the next instant, a flood of black shapes poured out from the canyon entrance.
An ant army.
But these were clearly different from the ants Ethan had faced before. The earlier ones had mostly wielded a single kind of infernal fla. The ones in front of them now had all kinds of elental fluctuations rippling across their bodies.
So burned with fire. So had frost coating their shells. So were wrapped in stormlike currents of wind. Others crackled with arcing lightning and pulses of dark-colored light.
And worse—
A heavy tallic energy coursed faintly over their carapaces, making their bodies look absurdly hard. Like they'd been forged rather than grown.
Which ant—
This ant legion didn't just have elental attack power. Their physical bodies were terrifyingly strong too.
Trying to wipe them out head-on wouldn't be easy. Not even close.
Ethan's gaze went ice-cold.
He was just about to give an order, but his troops had already surged out ahead of him.
After a string of wins and nonstop looting, everyone's fighting spirit was pegged at the ceiling. And this ant legion? In their eyes, it didn't look like an enemy army so much as a walking vein of energy ore, delivering itself to them.
The one who charged the fastest—
Was Queen Elowen.
The instant she saw them, she moved.
She already wielded absurdly strong ice-elent power—she had an almost instinctive affinity for extre cold. And among these ants, a large portion carried an icy aura… except their frost was laced with a brutally domineering Infernal Essence.
To anyone else, that kind of power scread danger.
But to Queen Elowen—
It was a swarm of mobile power sources.
She didn't even spare them a second glance. Her whole body turned into a streak of cold light and shot straight into their formation.
The power in her hand detonated. Ice and razor-sharp energy compressed together into a blade, and she hacked down at the ants in front.
In the next heartbeat, four or five ants were cut clean in half.
As their bodies split, several ice crystals rolled out, each one breathing the stench of hellish energy.
The mont those crystals hit the air, thick white frost spread around them. The cold was so vicious it sank into the bone—an ordinary person couldn't absorb it, and probably couldn't even touch it without getting flash-frozen into an ice statue.
But when Queen Elowen saw them, her eyes practically lit up.
No hesitation. She bent down, snatched the crystals up, and slamd them straight into her body.
"Thump! Thump! Thump—"
Dull, violent impacts echoed from inside her.
Savage ice power exploded through her in an instant, racing through her limbs and bones. The next second, an even more terrifying blizzard erupted from her body, fanning out in a wide sweep.
A huge patch of ants froze in place on the spot.
And the scariest part?
Those frozen ants themselves possessed extre ice power.
But now they were completely suppressed by ice of a higher tier—stronger, purer—so thoroughly that even the elental fluctuations inside them were forcibly sealed.
That sight lit the battlefield on fire.
The others saw it and instantly snapped. Who could hold back after that? They charged even harder than before, eyes wild, going after the ants like starving miners hitting a gold rush.
And in the center of the ant army, Ant King Threxus' eyes went wide.
In his understanding, their race was practically unbeatable in Nexaris. No matter what enemy they faced, once the ant tide truly ford, there was usually only one outco—
The other side would be stripped to bare white bones in monts.
But now—
They had beco the prey.
And worse, the ones hunting them were obviously treating them like resources to be harvested.
Seeing it, Ethan couldn't help laughing.
He drew a deep breath. Power roared through him again, and white lightning crawled over muscle and bone. In the next instant, he was already plunging straight into the heart of the ant legion.
And right then, Ant King Threxus finally snapped.
It released a low, grating roar, and its entire body shot up into the air.
Countless elental forces erupted from it at once—fla, ice, stormwind, thunder, and tallic energy—all spreading outward together. The shockwave hamred the surrounding valley so hard it blasted out crater after crater.
"You outsiders—!"
Its voice, thick with rage and killing intent, bood through the canyon.
"You invade our territory, and you dare act this recklessly here!"
As it bellowed, all the elental power around it began to converge back toward it.
"Since that's how it is—"
It lifted its head high, its aura suddenly surging.
"I'll show you what real fear looks like!"
The next mont, energy between heaven and earth was forcibly drained.
A gigantic ant-shaped phantom began to condense rapidly in the sky.
It wasn't so ordinary elental projection. It was a horrifying manifestation of power.
Fla ford its outer shell. Ice hardened into its skeleton. Storms coiled around its joints. Lightning crouched along its antennae. And tallic energy layered over it like unbreakable armor plating, covering its entire body.
Even more unsettling—
Deep inside that blended power, two completely different auras flowed at the sa ti… equally dangerous.
The aura of Hell.
And the aura of The Infernal Abyss.
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