Ethan's brows pulled together imdiately.
So he wasn't the only one who'd thought of coming during Calamity Days to pick up easy kills.
He steadied his breathing, and the power inside him rose again with it. Transparent lightning gathered around his body. One lightning sphere after another took shape, floating in midair, each one vibrating with a dense, suppressed whine.
But just as Ethan was about to strike—
The man across from him suddenly changed.
He clasped his hands together and dropped to one knee, so smoothly it looked practiced. The hostility and probing in his face vanished, replaced by an almost sincere, admiring expression.
"You two are seriously incredible!"
He looked up at Ethan and Queen Seraphine, switching tones so fast it was almost funny.
"Every ti I co here, just finding those guys takes forever—and I still can't lock onto their exact positions. But you show up and, just like that, you drag out more than ten."
As he spoke, he deliberately glanced at the floating energy cores, the heat in his eyes getting even more obvious.
"So… how about it?" He paused, piling on the smile until it nearly overflowed. "Why don't we team up?"
When Ethan heard team up, his temple twitched.
His expression barely changed, but his eyes never truly left the other person.
On the surface, the guy knelt without hesitation, spoke smoothly, even put on the perfect amount of enthusiasm. But Ethan had never been the type to relax because soone acted polite.
Keeping his pressure just barely there, he opened the system silently.
The data panel unfolded across his vision. Streams of light swept over the other person's outline—reading aura, bone structure, muscle patterns, energy flow—peeling it down layer by layer.
When the results ca back, Ethan's eyebrow lifted slightly.
The person in front of him wasn't a man at all.
She was a girl.
And he had no idea what kind of technique she'd used, but she'd ford an almost perfect "human skin mask" over her body—altering her face, her bone lines, even the fine details of her aura until it was airtight.
If the system hadn't forcibly pierced the disguise, normal eyesight and standard perception would've had basically zero chance of seeing through it.
What made Ethan look twice was the power circulating inside her.
It wasn't a common energy structure. It was an extrely strange kind of lightning power.
It didn't have the sharp, direct edge of Ethan's transparent lightning, and it wasn't the rough, violent feel of ordinary thunder abilities either. It carried a weird, restrained pulse, buried deep under the disguise—like an electric serpent coiled up and waiting.
Ethan didn't expose her.
He just gave her a brief glance and nodded casually, like he was granting her permission to follow for now, then turned and walked deeper into the gorge.
The canyon was already narrow. The cliffs on both sides rose steep and tight, and the farther in they went, the heavier the air beca. The stone faces were webbed with visible cracks and strange patterns, and violent power rippled out from within them in waves.
Even the ground underfoot wasn't stable—gravel everywhere, and scorched marks in many places where energy had swept through.
Ethan walked a little farther, then stopped abruptly.
He turned his head toward a massive boulder at the edge of the gorge.
It stood there quietly, not looking much different from the surrounding rock. But when Ethan's eyes landed on it, understanding flashed in his gaze.
In the next instant, he struck.
Violent energy smashed into the boulder.
Boom—!
The whole rock exploded on the spot.
Shards blasted in every direction. Before the dust could fully settle, more than a dozen figures rolled out from inside.
They'd clearly been hidden deep. Getting ripped out of cover like that left them in complete disarray—stumbling, staggering, so of them not even managing to stay on their feet as they spilled out into the open.
Ethan didn't give them even a sliver of room to struggle.
The mont his hand lifted, transparent lightning was already washing over them. Arcs crossed through the air like blades, sealing off every escape route first—then the strike ca down head-on and blew the dozen-plus people into pulp.
Flesh and shattered energy fragnts sprayed outward, only to be shredded again by the follow-up tremors of thunderlight.
Beside him, the girl's eyes lit up.
She clearly hadn't expected Ethan to find people that fast—or kill that clean.
Before the tallic tang in the air could even fade, she hurried over, crouched, and snatched up several energy cores that had fallen to the ground.
She moved like soone afraid the world would steal them from her.
Holding the cores in both hands, her expression turned almost reverent. She studied them twice, and the joy in her eyes was impossible to hide.
"With these, I can raise my energy faster," she murmured, excitent trembling through her voice. "Once I'm stronger, I can go beat Morveth."
Morveth.
The instant that na left her mouth, Ethan's gaze changed.
Since entering Varkharr, he'd run into plenty of enemies—but only a few that could really be called worth it. Now a na popped up out of nowhere, and the way she said it—focused, hungry—hooked Ethan's interest imdiately.
He turned and put a hand on her shoulder.
"Where are you from?" Ethan stared at her. "Who's Morveth? Is he strong?"
The girl jolted under his grip, body tensing for a split second. But she recovered fast. After that brief flash of panic, she steadied herself. She didn't back away or try to shake him off—she simply pulled out a round, ball-shaped object from her gear.
It wasn't big. Its surface was smooth as polished glass.
She tapped it lightly.
In the next mont, the sphere lit up.
Countless fine lines unfolded like sothing igniting from within, projecting outward in layered patterns. Then a razor-clear, three-dinsional map floated in front of them.
It wasn't a flat image—it was a full spatial projection. Mountains, gorges, fissures, rises and dips in the terrain… even the outlines of hidden regions were rendered with eerie detail.
"This place… is my ho," the girl said, pointing at a section of the map. Her voice dropped a little. "But Morveth ruined it."
Her fingertip shifted slightly forward.
"I ca here to collect power. When I've gathered enough, I'm going over there to kill him."
Ethan stared at the projection for two breaths.
Then he laughed.
It started low, then grew louder and louder—wild, thrilled, almost feral—echoing up and down the canyon walls.
"Good." His eyes were bright. "That sounds like he might actually be strong."
He pointed at the cores in her hands, then looked back at her.
"From now on, you stick with ," Ethan said, sharp and decisive. "Any energy cores I earn—you take as many as you want. When we're done here, you'll take us to Morveth."
The girl froze.
She clearly hadn't expected Ethan to agree that fast—let alone offer to help her hunt Morveth and share the cores with her.
Then her shock flipped into pure excitent.
"Yes!"
Fast. Loud. Imdiate.
Neither of them wasted ti with extra words after that. With the goal and direction laid out, everything else got a lot simpler.
For the next stretch of ti, Ethan took her deeper through the gorge.
The sphere in her hand could project an insanely detailed 3D map, and once Ethan's system interfaced with it, it could lock onto hidden auras with frightening speed. Layer those two abilities together, and the effect was ridiculous.
Varkharr people hiding behind rocks, inside cliff-wall layers, down in underground fissures—even embedded deep inside mountains that looked completely ordinary—got dragged out one after another.
And once they were pulled into open air, their endings were almost always the sa.
It was like the nesis power had been waiting for them to show their faces.
A lot of them didn't even get a chance to run. The Calamity Day force hanging over heaven and earth would already be pressing down.
Blood-red lightning. Bizarre storms. Natural alien forces that countered them at the root.
The mont those Varkharr natives were exposed, that power would slam into them hard—shattering their already-suppressed strength into scattered wreckage.
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