Ethan was about to seize the opening—compress his power even further and finish it in one clean kill.
But right then—
Sothing went wrong.
That ant suddenly released a burst of violently oppressive power from inside its body. Imdiately after, a mass of brownish-purple energy exploded out from deep within it.
The force ca insanely fast, like so corrosive origin power that had been forcibly suppressed for ages—then, the instant the floodgates opened, it swept through the surrounding space.
Ethan's pupils snapped tight.
He retreated on instinct, at the sa ti condensing white lightning in his palm. He ford it into a huge sphere of energy and hurled it straight into the brownish-purple mass.
The mont the two forces touched in midair, the power that erupted was beyond anything they'd produced in any previous clash at this level.
The world rumbled again with a deep, rolling boom.
The surrounding valley, the fractures in the sky, the broken layers of space itself—everything took the hit. Huge sheets of rock were ripped up and thrown aside, and even the two armies fighting in the distance were forced off their original lines by the shockwave.
But what made Ethan's blood run cold wasn't the explosion.
It was the corrosive aura bleeding out of that brownish-purple energy.
It was… wrong.
It carried obvious destruction, but also a completely unfamiliar attribute. Not simple burning. Not simple erosion. It felt like a power that could slowly dissolve "existence itself."
Even getting grazed by the aftermath, Ethan's muscles spasd uncontrollably.
For a split second, faint corrosion marks even appeared on the outer layer of the Powered Combat Armor.
He understood imdiately—
He couldn't let that energy touch him head-on.
If it truly invaded his body, the outco probably wouldn't be "injured." His entire body might be lted down completely.
With that thought, Ethan didn't hesitate. He pulled back again, retreating more than ten steps in a row, and rapidly stacked several thick energy barriers around himself. White lightning and the armor's defensive systems ran at the sa ti, locking him tight in the center.
On the other side, the full-scale lee between the armies had already gone completely white-hot.
The ant legion's numbers and overall strength were far beyond what they'd expected. Erald Castle's side was riding high on montum from nonstop gains, but against a monster army mixing elents, tal energy, and infernal aura, they still couldn't crush them quickly.
And what gave Ethan an even bigger headache was—
This ant legion clearly wasn't so slapdash force thrown together at the last minute.
They'd arrived too suddenly, but their coordination was far too practiced—like a card that had been kept hidden on purpose, saved specifically for so extre situation.
If these things had been present during the final battle with Zerathrax earlier, Erald Castle's army would never have taken that win so smoothly.
Ethan's breathing had sped up to the limit.
That ant "lord" wielding brownish-purple corrosive energy was not a normal enemy by any definition.
The aura constantly spreading off it felt like a mutated form of white lightning… but mixed with so deeper, alien power from the depths of The Infernal Abyss.
With every collision, Ethan could clearly feel it trying to chew through his defenses. Even the patterns etched across the Powered Combat Armor's surface were starting to show faint scorch-corrosion.
And in the brief mont he lost focus—when he couldn't see a clean way to break the situation—
Three slender figures suddenly rushed in from not far away.
They didn't slow down. They didn't waste words.
They turned into three streaks of different-colored light and slamd into Ethan's body without hesitation.
In that instant, Ethan's body jolted hard, like three forces that didn't belong to him had been forcibly plugged into his energy structure at the sa ti.
Idra. Auri. Nysera.
The three little girls poured in everything they could possibly mobilize, holding nothing back, forcing it all into him.
It wasn't a simple stacking of energy.
It felt more like a higher-level resonance.
After those three streams entered Ethan, they didn't clash with each other. Instead, they fused in an incredibly strange way almost instantly. Ethan's white lightning surged violently in the sa breath, bleaching the surrounding space a harsh, ghastly white. The chaotic field around him—monts ago unstable—reassembled itself in the blink of an eye.
Ethan could clearly feel it—his power was climbing at breakneck speed.
His bones heated up. His blood boiled. Even his consciousness felt like it was being yanked up a level. This wasn't so vague "I feel stronger" sensation. It was an unmistakably clear leap in tier.
34 Tier.
In that mont, his overall strength finally stepped into the height he'd been just a hair away from.
The instant it hit that threshold, violent energy detonated outward from him.
The white lightning didn't just wrap around his body anymore. It surged out like a truly awakened sea of thunder, flooding the space around him. Ethan didn't pause for even a breath—he slamd straight into the ant lord head-on.
The two forces collided viciously in midair.
But this ti—
The outco was completely different.
Ethan didn't give an inch.
Instead, the ant lord was blown back the mont they t. The recoil was terrifying, snapping its arms into exploding chunks of at. Shattered carapace and gore sprayed through the air.
"Bang! Bang! Bang—!"
A chain of explosive cracks echoed through the valley.
Ethan didn't give it a second to breathe.
He threw an arm up, compressing all that freshly fused power high into the sky.
White lightning spiraled and gathered, condensing into a gigantic sphere of energy at the top of the heavens. It was massive and heavy, thunder churning violently inside it—like a white sun about to fall.
The next second, he dropped it.
The ant lord panicked to the point of terror.
Almost purely on instinct, it pulled every last scrap of power inward, forcing its remaining white lightning and that dangerous brownish-purple energy to condense. Layer after layer of stacked defensive barriers ford in front of it.
But those barriers, in front of Ethan now—
Were as flimsy as paper.
The white energy sphere smashed through on contact, obliterating them instantly. Lightning and impact poured through. The ant lord didn't even get out a full scream before its entire body was blasted into fragnts.
Ethan surged forward almost the instant it ca apart.
He ignored the scattered shell and severed limbs. His eyes locked imdiately onto the snow-white energy core that had dropped to the ground.
It was still faintly pulsing, with threads of brownish-purple haze wrapped around its surface, radiating a brutal, dangerous fluctuation.
But the mont Ethan grabbed it, he felt sothing unexpected.
Compatibility.
Like it had always been ant to be his.
He slowly released his own power, letting the white lightning seep into the core little by little.
With a soft, faint hum, the core's chaotic internal structure snapped awake. In the sa instant, the brownish-purple aura tangled around it surged out as well, flowing through his palm and into his body.
Only then did Ethan truly understand.
This power, at its root, also belonged to The Infernal Abyss.
It was just mixed with too many impurities—too much contamination—which was why it couldn't be cleanly converted into pure white lightning the way Lily's could. Even so, it still shared a common origin with the strength inside him.
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