A flicker of excitent flashed through Ethan’s eyes.
He’d seen runes like these before.
More precisely, the runes he’d once obtained had long since fused into his own power system—becoming part of his body, part of his energy.
And that was exactly why, as those blue runes kept flashing across the rock wall, the Infernal Primordial Power inside him didn’t reject them. It responded instead—like it had heard a call it hadn’t heard in ages.
Ethan lifted his hand.
A golden glow lit up from deep within his palm, spreading outward along the ghastly white lightning. The light didn’t strike the grotesque creature, and it didn’t keep suppressing the ghost-blue bird either. It flowed straight toward the blue runes on the wall.
The instant the two lights touched, the entire cave went quiet.
Then, one by one, the runes on the rock face began to ignite.
Ghost-blue patterns rose from the depths of the stone, like sothing being yanked awake from sleep. They’d only been carved into the wall—but the mont Ethan’s power drew near, those lines started peeling away from the rock itself, condensing into real runes that hung suspended in midair.
A domineering presence surged up from beneath the ground.
It climbed out of the fissures below and punched straight into the center of the cave. More blue runes appeared out of nowhere, spinning around Ethan.
They circled his shoulders, his arms, his chest—each rune radiating an ancient, heavy pressure that rolled outward in waves.
Across from him, the grotesque creature’s eyes flared bright.
This was why it had stayed here. These were the runes hidden inside this cave.
It had tried who knew how many thods—tearing open layers of bedrock, manipulating that ghost-blue energy, even waiting in this space for a long, long ti—and yet it had never managed to truly force these runes out.
They’d been tucked away inside sothing deeper, woven into rules beneath the surface. No matter how it devoured, it could only brush against a thin outer ripple.
But Ethan had done nothing more than release his own power, and every rune revealed itself willingly.
The creature couldn’t stay calm anymore.
It abandoned the stalemate of mutual devouring with Ethan’s energy sphere, taking several quick steps back, eyes locked on the runes floating in the air.
In the next instant, it reached out and grabbed.
Ghost-blue energy burst from its palm, forming a massive claw-shaped projection that tried to forcibly drag the runes over to its side.
The runes didn’t even acknowledge it.
They moved like they’d finally found their true owner.
One after another, the blue runes slipped around the ghost-blue claw, ripping through the air with a shriek as they shot straight at Ethan.
The first rune slamd into his chest, and ghastly white lightning imdiately exploded outward in a ring. The second sank into his arm, and along the edges of the transparent electric glow, ghost-blue patterns surfaced. The third, the fourth—more and more runes plunged into his body without pause.
Ethan’s aura surged again.
The ghost-blue energy in the underground space began to whirl backward. Power that had been under the creature’s control was forcibly stripped away by the runes and redirected into Ethan instead. Ghastly white lightning, transparent electric light, the shadowy wind, and the power of these Infernal Abyss runes layered together inside him, weaving into each other again and again.
And then, from deep within him, a lazy, familiar voice sounded.
"Didn’t expect this. In so nothing little cave like this, you actually found Infernal Abyss runes."
Lily was awake.
There was less of her usual careless drawl this ti—and a thread of real interest instead.
"Looks like there has to be an Infernal Abyss core buried deep under the earth."
Ethan’s gaze turned scorching.
An Infernal Abyss core.
He really had run into things like that before—more than once—but every single ti it had been a defective fragnt. The power inside was incomplete, unable to bring out anything close to its true might.
Those broken cores could only top him off a little. They couldn’t fully restore Lily’s body, and they definitely couldn’t push his Infernal Primordial Power through a real qualitative transformation.
But if there was truly a complete Infernal Abyss core here...
That changed everything.
It wouldn’t just let Lily recover.
It would let his own power keep climbing.
The grotesque creature across from him had heard Lily’s voice too.
It froze in place, and for the first ti, genuine shock crept onto its face.
It hadn’t expected another consciousness to be hidden inside Ethan—and that voice... it sounded like a little girl.
Its eyes swept over Ethan. Greed and wariness flickered back and forth so fast they almost looked like the sa emotion, and for a beat it didn’t know whether to keep fighting for the runes—or figure out where that voice was coming from first.
That mont of hesitation was deadly.
Ethan’s power detonated.
Pure Infernal Primordial Power erupted from his body. The ghastly white lightning and the blue runes spun together, forming a massive energy vortex right in the center of the cave.
It didn’t spread outward.
It slamd down on the creature instead—like an invisible giant hand, pinning its body flat to the ground.
Boom!
The grotesque creature crashed into the earth, and the rock strata split outward in spiderweb cracks.
It tried to struggle. Ghost-blue energy blasted from its back, attempting to condense into that flying bird again—
But the newly manifested blue runes had already boxed it in. One rune after another pressed down, forcing the devouring power inside it to seal back up.
Then the pressure dropped in like a sky collapsing.
The creature finally panicked.
It threw its mouth open in a low roar, fingers clawing into the ground as it tried to push itself up.
But the Infernal Primordial vortex crushed down on it so hard it couldn’t draw up even a sliver of full strength. All it could do was watch as ghastly white lightning coiled around its wrists and ankles.
The arcs snapped tight.
Its hands and feet were ripped clean off.
A scream exploded through the cave—only to be ground into nothing by the vortex a heartbeat later.
Ethan didn’t stop.
The blue runes kept pressing downward. Ghastly white lightning speared into the creature through the torn stumps, drilling deep and ripping apart flesh, bone, and that ghost-blue energy all at once.
Before long, the grotesque creature was shredded completely into pieces.
Ragged chunks of at scattered across the ground, quickly going slack and dead. Ghost-blue energy leaked out, trying to regroup—
Only to be swallowed by the surrounding runes, leaving nothing behind.
Ethan lowered his eyes.
A ghost-blue gemstone rolled out from between the mangled flesh and clinked onto the black rock.
It wasn’t large, but it was unbelievably pure. Inside it, ghost-blue energy rotated slowly, so dense it dwarfed everything the creature had just released.
Ethan bent down and lifted it to eye level. Transparent lightning imdiately wrapped around his palm and latched onto the gem.
Fine cracks appeared across its surface first.
Then the transparent lightning began breaking it down bit by bit.
The hard crystalline structure dissolved into gaseous energy. A haze of ghost-blue light stread along Ethan’s palm and slipped into his body. The mont it entered him, it fused into his lightning, and deep within the ghastly white arcs, a layer of dark ghost-blue patterns blood.
A more ferocious power rolled out of Ethan.
It flooded the entire cave.
The blue runes on the rock walls stopped scattering wildly. Instead, they circled him in a slow, steady orbit.
And from far down in the fissures, a continuous answering pulse ca back—like sothing heavier was waiting in the dark, patient and unmoving, just beyond reach.
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