The air was shrieking.
Not wind—
The seawater itself was being forcibly dragged toward so bottomless center.
The vortex hung in the middle of the Nether Sea like a gaping mouth, silent and greedy as it swallowed everything in reach. Water, broken stone, wreckage— even drifting currents of energy got yanked in, unable to escape its pull.
It only consud.
It never spat anything back out.
"If this keeps up…" Ethan muttered, his brow tightening inch by inch, "the whole Nether Sea is going to get drained dry."
He lifted a hand.
[SYSTEM SCAN — ACTIVATED]
A layer of near-invisible blue light rippled outward from deep within his pupils, like rings spreading across a pond, slipping quickly into the heart of the whirlpool.
A few seconds later—
The system returned its result.
And Ethan's breath stalled in his chest.
[Target Classification: Living Organism]
Living.
Not a phenonon.
Not a spatial rift.
Not a natural disaster.
But—
A creature.
Ethan's pupils tightened.
If that was true…
Then this thing's size had already crossed out of the category of "animal."
It was an ecosystem by itself.
He didn't hesitate.
Power stirred awake inside him.
Primordial Force rose like a sleeping dragon, flowing along his bones as faint energy tracery surfaced across his skin.
The next second—
He jumped straight into the vortex.
No splash.
Just falling.
Endless falling.
What surrounded him wasn't normal seawater anymore, but sothing thicker—like liquid energy. His descent accelerated, faster and faster, as if gravity itself kept stacking heavier with every heartbeat.
Ti stopped aning anything.
Maybe seconds passed.
Maybe minutes.
Then—
He landed.
Not on the seabed.
On sothing soft.
Ethan frowned and looked down.
It wasn't rock.
Wasn't sand.
It was… living tissue.
It rose and fell, slowly contracting and expanding like the breath of so colossal thing.
Warm.
Damp.
And so huge it made his instincts itch.
He triggered another scan.
This ti, the system finally displayed the full structure.
Ethan's heart skipped.
This wasn't a normal lifeform.
It was a mutated oceanic mollusk.
Its body covered a range of hundreds of kiloters, buried deep beneath the Nether Sea. The whirlpool wasn't so attack it had created—it was how it ate.
It was filtering the entire ocean.
The system readout scrolled rapidly:
[Function Identified: Energy Filtration]
It was absorbing everything in the seawater—
Impurities.
Pollution.
Chaotic energy.
And leaving only the purest core energy behind, storing it inside its body.
It wasn't a predator.
It was—
A filter.
Ethan's breathing grew heavier.
Right now, Erald Castle's biggest problem wasn't a lack of energy.
It was that the energy wasn't pure enough.
Too much of it couldn't be absorbed directly—it had to go through complicated conversion.
And the existence in front of him…
Could solve that problem.
Completely.
He was still thinking when—
The air turned cold.
Not in temperature.
In sothing deeper.
Space itself grew heavy.
A figure appeared in front of him with no warning at all.
As if it had always been there—
Only now allowing itself to be seen.
It was humanoid.
Skin the dark blue of the deep sea, pupils threaded with faint white light. He stood there without releasing any obvious killing intent.
But his presence alone was pressure.
Pure Nethora energy flowed through him.
No impurities.
No chaos.
Perfect, in a way that didn't feel mortal.
"You don't belong here."
His voice was low and calm.
And yet it carried authority that didn't allow resistance.
"State your purpose."
Ethan didn't step back.
"I'm this world's new master," he said.
No bragging.
Just a statent of fact.
The guardian's gaze tightened slightly.
He crouched and placed his palm gently on the soft tissue beneath their feet.
The massive creature responded imdiately.
The tissue gave off a faint glow—
Like it was answering him.
The guardian stood again. He looked at Ethan, then drew a white crystal from inside his robes.
It floated in the air, radiating a gentle, steady light.
He pushed it toward Ethan.
"Take it."
The instant Ethan caught it, the system went insane with alarms.
[Energy Density: EXTRE]
His breathing stopped.
He recognized it.
"Worldheart Crystal…" The words ca out as a near-whisper.
The guardian gave a slight nod.
"This is one of the Nether Sea's core energy sources."
Ethan's grip tightened.
A thumbnail-sized piece of Worldheart Crystal was enough to keep a Sky Fortress running.
And the one in his hand—
Was the size of a fist.
This wasn't compensation.
It was a warning.
The guardian's eyes cooled.
"This is the boundary," he said.
"Do not go deeper."
Ethan stayed silent for a few seconds.
Then he asked, "Where's the mine?"
The air froze.
The guardian's gaze turned utterly cold.
"That isn't sothing you're ant to know."
His body began to turn translucent.
"Next ti," he said, "I won't pay you off."
Then he vanished.
At the sa ti—
The gigantic creature beneath Ethan's feet began to contract.
Not dying.
Compressing.
Its body—hundreds of kiloters of it—folded and concentrated at a terrifying speed until, in the end…
Only a tiny white worm remained.
It wriggled slowly.
Then drilled into the seafloor and disappeared.
As if it had never existed at all.
Ethan stood on the surface of the sea.
The wind was cold.
But his thoughts were colder than the water.
The existence of the Worldheart Crystal had been confird.
And the Netherkin clearly weren't going to hand over the mine's location just because he asked nicely.
"Head-on conflict is pointless…" he murmured.
The other side didn't just have a guardian—they had that ancient lifeform capable of filtering the entire Nether Sea. Moving rashly would only drag Erald Castle into a war it didn't need.
He let out a slow breath.
Forced the hunger in his chest back down.
The opportunity wasn't going anywhere.
All he had to do… was wait.
He turned, ready to head back to Erald Castle's camp.
And in that exact mont—
The sky dimd.
Not because of storm clouds.
Because sothing's presence itself blotted out the light.
An indescribable pressure dropped from high above.
It wasn't wind.
Wasn't an energy fluctuation.
It was will.
Erald Castle's army felt it first.
Tens of thousands of soldiers froze at the sa ti.
Breathing beca difficult, like the air had turned into liquid—
Heavy.
Sticky.
Suffocating.
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