Ethan looked down at it, his voice steady, stripped of emotion.
"I’ll give you one chance to live," he said.
"Tell —where did you co from? Why did you attack ?"
His tone sharpened. "If you don’t talk, I’ll skin you and make boots out of your hide."
But the bull didn’t show even a flicker of fear.
Its blood-red eyes only burned fiercer with madness. A guttural growl rolled out of its throat, low and feral—like it had lost all trace of reason or language.
Even pinned to the ground, the thing kept thrashing violently, trying to tear free.
Ethan’s brows drew together slightly.
—This wasn’t normal beast behavior.
It felt like sothing was driving it—pushing it forward with zero regard for survival. No room for negotiation.
He stopped holding back.
An Energy Disc pulsed into being in his palm. The air around it shimred, faint ripples twisting space.
Then in the next instant, the blade dropped.
Shhk!
The disc sliced through the bull’s thick neck. Muscle and tendon tore apart. Blood fountained as its massive head tumbled into the gravel with a wet thud.
Even then, the body spasd for several seconds before it finally lay still.
Ethan glanced at the severed edge of the wound, sothing tightening in his chest.
If the Energy Disc hadn’t included a spatial tear component, there was no way he could’ve cut through that crazy-tough hide with raw force alone.
He bent down and peeled the skin off in one clean motion, then quickly tested its durability and energy conductivity.
—Extrely high.
This stuff would make top-tier armor. Or serve as premium-grade materials. Either way, it was valuable.
Just as he was about to store it—
Soft, asured applause echoed from the trees nearby.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
A middle-aged man erged from the shadows, walking with calm, deliberate steps.
He was well-dressed. Clean-cut and handso, with a faint, unreadable smile on his lips. But his eyes were sharp—cold and calculating. The way he looked at Ethan wasn’t hostility... but interest. Like a scientist spotting a rare specin.
"Well, now," the man said. "That’s not sothing you see every day."
"It’s rare for outsiders to co in here and unleash power at that level."
His gaze fell to the bull’s corpse. His voice stayed mild, but there was a subtle note of disappointnt in it.
"To think... you actually killed my Prival Behemoth."
Ethan’s eyes turned ice-cold.
He stepped back half a pace, letting energy ripple through his body.
Idra and Auri both shifted into combat mode with seamless instinct. An oppressive aura settled into the air around them like pressure before a storm.
In a space like this—strange, unfamiliar—anyone who looked "too normal" was automatically the biggest red flag.
The man stopped about thirty feet away, not moving any closer.
He slowly raised both hands, signaling he wasn’t about to attack. From his coat, he drew a smooth, bright-white sphere.
Runes shimred across its surface—tiny filigree-like patterns that traced an intricate circuit, pulsing with a steady, resonant kind of energy.
"Strictly speaking, I count as one of this world’s natives," he said.
"You and your friends charging in like this... would it have killed you to say hello first?"
His tone was light, but there was a subtle undercurrent running through it—like he was weighing Ethan, asuring him.
"And now, with no warning and no explanation, you go and kill my Prival Behemoth."
His smile didn’t fade, but the edge in his voice sharpened almost imperceptibly.
"That’s... just a little rude, don’t you think?"
Ethan’s frown deepened.
The bull had attacked first—unprovoked, murderous intent written in every move. If he hadn’t fought back, he would’ve been the one lying dead in the rubble.
But this guy clearly wasn’t interested in facts. He was deliberately muddying the line between cause and effect.
Idra couldn’t hold back anymore.
She stepped forward, and the ground beneath her dipped slightly as the power of the Dragon God surged out of her like a flood.
In an instant, the air turned blistering hot—thick with heat and pressure.
Behind her, a massive golden dragon silhouette began to take shape. Scales glead like tal, wings unfurled wide, blotting out the sky. Its presence alone pressed down on the forest like sothing physical, heavy and undeniable.
"You’ve gone too far!"
Her voice rang clear and sharp, filled with righteous fury as she pointed at the middle-aged man.
"It was your bull that attacked first! And now you’re turning it around and accusing my dad?!"
Her dragon might flared in sync with her rising anger. The air shimred, warping under the force of it.
The man blinked, clearly caught off guard.
His gaze flicked between Idra and Ethan. His brow furrowed slightly, like so equation in his head had just stopped adding up.
Then he spoke—half puzzled, half mocking.
"You two look about the sa age. Why’s she calling you ’Dad’? That... is a hell of a ssed-up backstory."
His tone was laced with disbelief and amusent, and though Idra couldn’t understand the words, she heard the dismissiveness in his voice. That smug, evaluating edge.
"Definitely not sothing polite," she muttered.
Her temper snapped.
The golden dragon behind her solidified in a flash, its imnse form crashing down from the sky like a falling sun—wrapped in annihilating pressure—aid directly at the man below.
BOOM—!
Air warped and collapsed in on itself before exploding outward in a sonic boom.
But.
The man didn’t panic.
Not even a little.
His pupils narrowed, and—unmistakably—his lips curled into an excited grin.
"Well, now... this just got interesting," he murmured, almost to himself.
Then, with a sharp lift of his hand, his energy detonated outward. The ground beneath his feet buckled under the sudden gravitational spike.
At the sa ti, he casually tossed the white orb up into the air.
It spun slowly overhead, and as the glyphs carved across its surface lit up, a spherical field of stabilized energy burst outward—like a transparent barrier locking into place.
It t the fiery descent of the dragon head-on.
The two forces—one divine and burning with raw destruction, the other cool, dense, and impossibly steady—collided in midair.
A deep, low-frequency hum began to throb through the woods.
...
Above them, the snow-white orb kept spinning gently.
Ethan’s eyes sharpened.
That wasn’t just so high-level energy construct.
It was more like a condensed crystallization of this world’s core essence—sothing pulled directly from the source and temporarily given form.
The white light it gave off wasn’t blinding. It was steady. Anchored. Like a keystone embedded deep within space itself.
And Idra’s golden dragon—fuelled by her Dragon God power—was being crushed beneath it, inch by inch. The oppressive aura that had shaken the forest now weakened with every passing second, her dragon will visibly thinning against that unshakable pressure.
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