Ethan steadied his breathing.
He forced the rise and fall of his chest down, tightening the rhythm bit by bit. He took a step back. The instant his foot planted on the deck, a faint tremor climbed up through his ankle—yet his whole body felt pinned in place by sothing invisible.
Then the energy inside him started to surge.
This wasn't a simple power-up. It was the kind of pressure that felt like it might spill out of him at any second. Strength roared along his ridians, only for him to clamp it down—hard—locking it against the surface of his body.
The Powered Combat Armor lit up in response. Luminous patterns crawled through the seams of the plating, channeling that excess power outward.
No charge.
Ethan just lifted a hand and released that energy, compressed to the limit, straight ahead.
The mont it left his body, the air tore open, a visible shock-line carved through the space between them and slamd into the sea-born monster's torso.
Impact followed imdiately.
The blast hit—and nothing gave. No ripping, no collapse. The recoil instead snapped back through the air, rolling over the deck in a deep, low vibration.
That thing didn't budge.
—Too hard.
And it wasn't just Ethan watching.
Everyone aboard the Erald Castle had already poured everything they had into it. Energy beams. Explosive volleys. Wave after wave hamring the deep-sea monster.
Light detonated across its surface like fireworks, but it might as well have been striking an unmovable slab of black rock—nothing left behind except spreading aftershocks.
Soone hesitated for half a beat.
Not because of an order.
Because their instincts flinched first.
At this density of fire, getting zero feedback was its own kind of pressure.
Ethan's brow tightened.
If this stalemate dragged on, the monster only needed one more forward rush to tear their whole fleet formation apart.
He drew in another breath.
This ti, he didn't strike right away.
Energy gathered in his palm. A thread of white lightning began to take shape—slowly. It wasn't stable. Arcs split and collapsed over and over, popping in the air with tiny crackling bursts. Then he pulled out an energy core and pressed it straight into that mass of lightning.
The fusion was brutal.
The lightning was forced to stretch. The core's glow swelled inside it. The two energies crushed and twisted against each other until they beca a single, violently unstable whole.
Ethan didn't hesitate.
He raised his hand and threw that condensed bundle out.
The trajectory was perfectly clear.
The white lightning cut through the air, dragging a bright trail as it shot in a straight line toward the center of the monster's torso. Contact happened in an instant—electric light exploded across its surface, and the core, driven by the force of the hit, punched directly inside.
The next mont—
An explosion.
No wind-up. No buffer.
The energy core went completely out of control inside the creature. White lightning ripped outward from within, swallowing the massive body whole. A shockwave surged in all directions, compressing the air and shoving it back, while the sea heaved up into a towering ring of spray.
The break was clean.
The deep-sea monster was torn apart in that single burst—shredded into countless pieces.
On the deck, everyone went silent for a heartbeat.
Ethan let out a breath.
But he didn't relax.
White lightning still prowled around him. Arcs kept snapping along the edges of his armor, as if ready to be guided out again at any mont.
The sea started to change.
The surface—only just cald—churned violently again. Waves stacked higher and higher. The waterline stretched and pulled, like sothing was gathering underneath.
Then they surfaced.
One monster after another rose out of the water, packed so densely they seed to blanket the sea. Energy rolled off every single one, tightening the air until it felt hard to breathe. Even the ships farther back began to wobble with a faint, uneasy sway.
Soone took a step back.
Not from an order.
Their body moved before their mind could catch up.
Ethan didn't look at them.
He slid another half-step back, braced his footing, and yanked the energy inside him up to its limit again. What he'd done just now had proven it worked. He didn't change the plan—he just repeated it.
Lightning ford in his palm.
He wrapped an energy core straight into it.
Compression. Fusion. Instability.
Then—he threw it.
After the first core detonated, the second followed right on its heels.
Again. And again.
White lightning streaked over the sea. Every hit ca with a violent blast. Shockwaves stacked over shockwaves, rippling outward in layers. The surface was flipped and torn up over and over; flesh and fragnts were shredded at each explosion's center, then swallowed and carried off by the water.
No pause.
Not until that whole stretch of ocean had been churned into rolling, broken spray did the monsters' shapes finally start to vanish.
The sea went empty again.
But on deck, nobody spoke.
They'd all seen it.
This thod worked.
Ethan lowered his hand. The arcs around him faded little by little. He propped his fingers at his chin, but his brow didn't ease.
The cost was too high.
This was an expedition. The fleet's energy and supplies were limited to begin with, and using power like this was basically setting their reserves on fire. Every detonation was a real, asurable loss.
If they kept going like this, they wouldn't need an enemy. They'd run out of resources first.
He still hadn't found an alternative—
When—
"Namyanna!"
A shout ca from behind and to the side.
Before the voice even finished, a figure was already at the edge of the deck.
Namyanna didn't hesitate for a second. She vaulted the railing and jumped down.
The movent was clean—like she'd made the decision a long ti ago.
Everyone on deck froze.
No one tried to stop her.
Because they all knew what that sea was.
From the beginning, the Oblivion Sea had felt wrong. The air above it carried sothing that made your skin crawl.
When they'd first arrived, soone had tried to enter the water to harvest resources—
The result had been simple.
The instant their body touched seawater, their energy was rapidly corroded. They lted in a terrifyingly short ti, leaving behind nothing but a puddle of dead water.
No room to struggle.
No second outco.
And now, Namyanna had already jumped.
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