Kaelira gripped her scepter and stared at him with ice-cold eyes.
"I told you already. You’re nothing but a third-rate bug. You were never qualified to be ntioned in the sa breath as ."
Her voice cut through the broken sky and landed squarely in Drazareth’s ears.
"Now die."
Drazareth’s face twisted. He tried to force his remaining power into motion—blood-red Netherfla surging from his chest, the snow-white gemstone in his forehead flashing frantically as it tried to feed energy back into the Powered Combat Armor.
Too late.
Kaelira pressed her scepter down.
Above them, the phoenix phantom spread its wings.
Purplish-red energy gathered from all directions, locking Drazareth in the center like a cage. The phoenix dove. Its wings swept across him, fla-like power wrapping in from the outside—then detonating from within at the sa ti, bursting through armor seams, energy lines, and the depths of flesh.
Drazareth let out a shriek that didn’t sound human anymore.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the Powered Combat Armor’s surface—then the entire suit blew apart from the inside.
His Netherfla tried to surge back.
The purplish-red force crushed it out, inch by inch, until it went dark.
Drazareth thrashed inside the phoenix’s shadow for only a few more seconds before that searing power swallowed him whole.
Ash drifted down from high above.
Drazareth was gone.
Ethan watched and slowly adjusted his breathing.
The mont Drazareth died, the oppressive presence that had clung to that patch of sky vanished. Kaelira drew her scepter back. Purplish-red power still flowed around her, but it no longer spilled outward.
She didn’t explain anything to Ethan. She didn’t say a single extra word.
She simply turned and returned to Erald Castle’s side.
Ethan stepped through empty air and walked toward the center of the battlefield.
With every step, Elysion’s world-force gathered closer to him.
The cracks in the sky that hadn’t fully sealed yet stopped spreading. Scattered motes of wild energy were caught by an invisible hand and pulled back under his control.
The fleets of the various civilizations hovered at a distance—cannons silent, shields flickering—yet no one dared to make the first move now.
Ethan stopped in the middle of the high sky and looked down on everyone.
"I’m not saying it a second ti."
His voice wasn’t loud, but the world’s power rode on it and pressed down like a weight.
A deep roar rolled from the sky’s depths. Elysion’s world-force spread with his words, passing over warships, over the elites of every civilization, and even over the spatial corridors that still hadn’t fully closed.
Everyone standing in this heaven and earth could feel it.
The power of this world was completely in Ethan’s hands now.
If he wanted, he could use Elysion’s world-force to bury most of the civilizations here together.
Leaders across the fleets went pale.
They’d watched the red giant civilization get erased by Erald Castle. They’d seen Thalzorak annihilated—body and soul. They’d seen Drazareth turned into drifting ash.
The ones who’d sneered at a "low-tier Plane World" finally understood sothing simple and brutal:
This human wasn’t standing here on luck.
He truly controlled this world.
The silence dragged on.
The first to break weren’t the proud ones—it was the weaker small civilizations. Their shields were already half-ruined, and they didn’t have enough heavy hitters left to keep staring death in the face.
A few leaders exchanged looks. Then they stepped out from their ships and dropped to their knees in midair.
After that, more followed.
They submitted to Ethan.
But not everyone was willing to bow.
So of the stronger, deeper-rooted civilizations stayed silent. They could accept a temporary retreat... but kneeling to an unknown "low-tier" civilization was another matter entirely.
Quiet orders went out.
One by one, their warships began opening spatial corridors in the surrounding sky.
The tunnels reopened—long, dark mouths tearing into space.
The civilizations that refused to submit didn’t provoke him again. They didn’t even bother with threats.
They simply withdrew with their fleets, fast and clean.
Warships vanished into the corridors one after another, bright engine trails carving long streaks across the shattered sky—then snapping out of existence.
Ethan didn’t stop them.
He simply watched those fleets withdraw, silent and patient, not a trace of impatience in his eyes. The System interface had already unfolded across his vision. One scanning pane after another swept over the departing warships—their elites, energy signatures, and the specific characteristics of their spatial corridors.
Every civilization that left was recorded.
They could run today.
But Ethan’s goal had never been limited to seizing a single broken world like Elysion. He wanted the entire world in his hands.
Whether those civilizations chose submission or escape, sooner or later they’d end up crawling at his feet all the sa.
Only after the last batch of defiant survivors disappeared did Ethan raise his hand.
Elysion’s world-force drew in fast, sealing off the surrounding heaven and earth. The spatial corridors that had just been opened snapped shut one after another, their jagged edges pressed flat again by the world itself.
Then he redirected his power and reinforced the corridor between Elysion and Erald Castle.
That passage had to remain.
Elysion’s underlying frawork was completely ruined. It wasn’t a stable, intact world anymore. The only thing that still made it worth anything was the sheer amount of terrifying energy it still contained.
The day that energy was fully drained, this place would beco nothing but a dead shell.
So Ethan didn’t feel much attachnt to it.
He quickly ordered Erald Castle’s army to withdraw, leaving behind only a tiny contingent to build an energy transfer station—tasked with continuously extracting what remained of Elysion’s world-force.
The small civilizations that had submitted were temporarily gathered up as well, held for later arrangents.
The main force crossed the corridor and returned to Erald Castle.
Days of nonstop fighting had worn everyone down to the bone. But underneath the exhaustion, there was a feverish excitent they couldn’t suppress.
The battle had put Erald Castle’s army under crushing pressure—yet it also forced them to evolve, again and again, through repeated brushes with death.
And more importantly...
The spoils were insane.
Almost everyone had a fistful of energy cores—dozens at a ti.
They ca from different civilizations, different elites, different warships, carrying all kinds of elental attributes. With those cores, they could keep pushing their strength higher.
Even so summons that had always been treated like background fodder suddenly had a chance. With enough energy poured into them, they might actually grow into true Crimson Ultimate heroes.
After this war, Erald Castle’s power spiked again—violently.
...
Inside the palace of the main city.
Ethan sat on his throne with his chin propped on one hand, boredom written all over his face.
Below him, several staff mbers responsible for administration kept delivering report after report about recent developnts in Erald Castle.
City expansion. Resident placents. Resource allocations. NPC disputes. Repairs and redeploynts across various outposts.
One item after another. All of it "important." None of it interesting.
Maybe these were problems a city manager had to care about.
For Ethan, it was pure tedium.
A huge portion of Erald Castle’s residents had been taken from other civilizations—most of them NPCs. And as a player, he had zero interest in dealing with their petty dostic drama.
Who was fighting over housing. Which district needed to be replanned. Which small group was unhappy with their share—
In Ethan’s ears, it all blended into the sa thing: flies buzzing around the great hall.
What he actually needed to do was simple.
Conquer the entire world.
Not sit here and listen to this small, pointless crap.
The reports kept going.
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