Ethan frowned slightly.
"Who the hell is that thing?" he asked under his breath. "In these waters, aren't you supposed to be the absolute rulers?"
Thalorien fell silent for a beat.
Then he slowly shook his head.
"We're the rulers of the deep sea."
"But we're not the only ones down here."
His gaze locked onto the colossal beast.
"In the deep, there are many ancient races."
"They have no civilization."
"No order."
"And no reason."
He paused, his voice dropping even lower.
"The Abyssal Serpents."
Ethan looked back at the monster.
Now the na actually fit.
Its body was a fusion of two apex predators—built wrong in a way that still made perfect sense.
"They carry the blood of both sea serpents and the deep-sea shark clans," Thalorien went on. "Extrely primitive. Extrely dangerous."
"Our ancestors tried to guide them."
"But it failed."
"They reject all rule."
Ethan nodded.
If anything, that kind of race interested him more.
The less "tad" a species was, the more likely it was to retain sothing raw and pure at its core.
He imdiately opened a system scan.
[Scanning target…]
[Species: Abyssal Serpents]
[Energy Tier: High]
[Bloodline composition detected…]
The next second—
the interface jittered with an abnormal ripple.
Ethan's pupils tightened.
Besides the sea serpent bloodline and the shark bloodline—
there was a third force.
A purple-red energy.
It didn't flow like water-elent power.
It felt more like smoldering embers.
Heavy.
Stifling.
Dangerous.
Ethan instantly thought of soone.
Desert Queen Kaelira.
That aura—almost identical.
Just more primal.
More violent.
A slow smile tugged at Ethan's mouth.
"Since this is my first ti paying a visit," he said, "I should bring a little gift."
Before the last word even landed—
his right hand clenched.
The air collapsed inward toward his palm.
Energy gathered fast.
Condensed.
Compressed.
Until it ford a massive battle-axe.
The blade glead a dark gold, and the space along its edge warped faintly, like reality couldn't quite sit still around it.
In the next instant—
Ethan vanished from where he stood.
Boom!
The seawater detonated outward as he appeared right in front of the monster.
The battle-axe ca down with annihilating force!
The beast didn't dodge.
Didn't even defend.
It simply lifted an arm.
The mont the axe-blade t its scales—
THUD!!!
A suffocating, heavy impact rolled through the entire deep sea.
A shockwave exploded outward.
And the space around them began to crack.
Not cracks in the water.
Actual fractures in space itself.
Black fissures spread through the sea like shattered glass, spidering out in jagged lines.
Sothing unfamiliar seeped out from deep within those rifts.
Cold.
Ancient.
Completely foreign to this world.
Ethan felt the danger in his bones.
But he didn't stop.
Because he'd realized sothing even more shocking.
His strike—
hadn't done any real damage.
That axe, strong enough to cleave through Titan-class defenses—
had only left a faint white mark on the monster's scales.
Ethan's teeth ground together with a sharp, audible click.
Not from anger.
From pressure.
His arm was still locked in the follow-through of the swing, but he could feel it clearly—the recoil traveling back from the axe-blade, crawling up his bones and leaving his muscles buzzing and numb.
He'd never run into this before.
Even Titan-class defenses couldn't fully stop his attacks.
But this monster—
had.
The beast slowly dipped its head.
Those dark yellow pupils pinned Ethan in place.
No fear.
Just a raw, instinctive contempt.
Like a top predator in the deep staring down prey that had wandered into the wrong territory.
Ethan drew a slow breath.
The seawater was freezing.
But inside him, sothing was turning molten-hot.
"If normal attacks won't work…"
His fingers tightened, inch by inch.
In that instant—
the power sleeping inside him was yanked fully awake.
Hummm—
the air began to vibrate.
Not from anything outside.
From him.
Light started bleeding off his body.
At first it was only a faint gold.
Then it flared, harsh and blinding.
The seawater began to pull away from him.
Not by currents.
By evaporation.
Fine bubbles erupted and shot upward in a frenzy.
The temperature around him was climbing—fast.
Thalorien snapped his head around.
His pupils shrank.
He could feel it—
Ethan was calling up sothing enormous.
Not through a tool.
Not through so external artifact.
Straight from his own core.
"Wait—"
His instincts scread at him to stop it.
But it was already too late.
Ethan's power had fully broken loose.
BOOM!!!
A massive pillar of light speared up from Ethan's body.
It burned gold-white, more than a few dozen feet across, like a gigantic lance punching through sea and sky.
The surrounding water boiled instantly.
Not taphorically.
Actually boiled.
Schools of fish scattered in blind panic.
So smaller creatures didn't even get that far—just brushing the edge of the beam flash-vaporized them on the spot.
Thalorien's breathing turned ragged.
He'd never seen power like this.
This wasn't the realm of ordinary life anymore.
If it kept going—
all of Thalaryn's territory would be wiped out.
But Ethan didn't stop.
Because he knew it.
If he pulled back now—
the one who died would be him.
"End it," Ethan murmured.
The pillar of light abruptly compressed.
Then—
it slamd down.
BOOOOM!!!!
The entire sea-region convulsed.
A shockwave ripped outward in every direction.
Space split again.
This ti it was worse than before.
Black rifts crawled wider, spreading like so unseen thing on the other side was trying to pry the world open—trying to peer through.
Thalorien's heart hamred like it was going to burst.
He finally understood.
If he did nothing—
it wouldn't just be the monster that destroyed them.
Ethan's power would destroy everything here, too.
He closed his eyes.
Then snapped them open.
No more hesitation.
He raised the snow-white gem.
The Worldheart Crystal.
It began to glow.
Not a blinding radiance—
a gentle light.
But inside that gentleness was a weight of power so imnse it made his skin prickle.
Thalorien whispered in an ancient tongue.
The gem answered.
The boiling stopped.
The energy in the surrounding sea began to gather toward him.
A huge sphere of power slowly ford in front of him.
It wasn't the force of destruction.
It was—
the force of dominion.
He thrust the sphere forward.
Boom!
It tore through the water, streaking straight for the monster.
And in that mont—
the monster suddenly opened its mouth.
Its voice was low and rough,
yet perfectly clear.
"Tiny creatures."
The whole sea seed to resonate with it.
"The ocean—"
"belongs to ."
Ethan's pupils shrank hard.
It could speak.
Which ant—
it had intelligence.
Thalorien's face drained of color.
This shouldn't be possible.
The Abyssal Serpents had never had language.
Never had civilization.
Unless—
it had evolved.
The monster slowly lifted a hand.
The seawater around it began to gather.
Not flowing.
Obeying.
Energy compressed in its palm.
Until it took shape—a massive weapon like a colossal fang.
It didn't look like a weapon so much as a symbol.
A symbol of deep-sea supremacy.
It raised the fang.
Then—
brought it down.
The entire sea seed to be swallowed by shadow.
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