Ethan didn’t stop.

His gaze swept across the battlefield and locked onto the scraps that still weren’t quite dead.

The next second, he cut loose every last strand of white lightning clinging to his body. The current spread between heaven and earth in an instant—bolts crisscrossing, linking together, weaving faster and faster until they formed a massive net of thunder that dropped over the remaining enemies and sealed them inside.

White lightning was different from transparent lightning. The pressure hit harder, more direct—made for smothering a wide area.

And these people were already on their last legs. They’d been mauled by the battleship’s ultimate weapon, shredded by Anya’s vortex, then battered apart by that chain of impacts. Now that the lightning net snapped shut around them, they didn’t even have room to struggle.

One of them barely managed to raise an arm—then the whole limb got split into fragments.

Another tried to force his way out. The moment he slammed into the net, his entire body was torn apart, ripped into four pieces like it was nothing.

It didn’t take long before the net held nothing but chaotic, flashing arcs.

When the light finally faded, the last of them had already scattered into nothing, erased from the world.

Only then did the fight truly end.

Ethan let out a slow breath and, with Anya, returned to the battleship.

This time, he didn’t rush to leave right away. He opened the system first and ran a more detailed scan of the surrounding area.

A light screen unfolded in front of him, sifting through everything—spatial fluctuations, residual energy, hidden anomalies—one layer at a time.

Only after confirming there were no new problems nearby did he restart the battleship.

And this time, he didn’t use the normal cruising mode.

As the output surged to full, a layer of transparent lightning quickly wrapped around the ship’s outer hull.

The electric glow clung to the metal like a flowing shell, constantly tearing open the air currents ahead and ripping through spatial resistance. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Once the propulsion system caught that force, the entire ship’s speed spiked instantly—more than several times faster than before.

In what felt like a blink, the battleship was already gone, dragging a long, transparent trail of light as it vanished into the sky.

Not long after they left, the high altitude that had finally begun to settle... shifted again.

A figure slowly emerged.

She appeared without a sound, but there was nothing gentle about her.

The moment she set foot in place, violent energy spread outward in a wave.

The already-warped space around the battlefield twisted sharply under the pressure. The boundary between air and void rumbled with a low, heavy vibration, and even the surrounding region began to crack—fine, dense fractures spiderwebbing through the sky.

"What happened here, exactly?"

A voice—sweet on the surface, almost coquettish—rang out. It wasn’t loud, yet it carried thick, undisguised killing intent.

Her eyes swept over the ruined traces of the battlefield, and her expression cooled by the second.

"It turned into this... Does that mean there’s still someone in this world—someone with strength like a god?"

Above Emerald Castle, a medium-sized battleship wrapped in transparent lightning tore through the air from the distance, leaving behind a thin, needlelike streak of light.

Ethan sat in the pilot’s seat, eyes past the forward observation window, watching the familiar outline of the castle emerge from the far edge of the horizon.

After a long stretch of travel, the battleship had finally arrived at Emerald Castle.

Anya stood beside him. It was her first time here, and she couldn’t quite hide her curiosity—eyes fixed on the massive cluster of buildings in the distance, and the bands of intersecting energy light high above.

Then, in the very next moment, both their expressions changed.

The outer perimeter of Emerald Castle was already surrounded—packed with a black mass of figures and warships.

This wasn’t a handful of scattered enemies. It was an army, layered thick across the sky. Countless silhouettes hovered at altitude, so dense they nearly blotted out the light beyond them.

Farther out, enormous warships sat in rows beneath the heavens. Cold energy patterns glowed along their hulls, like metallic city walls hanging in midair.

Oppression hit them head-on.

Overwhelming energy poured off that airborne host—overlapping, colliding, compressing—until the entire sky around Emerald Castle felt stuffed full.

Space, once stable, trembled under the pressure. Fine cracks appeared in the high air—then, in the next heartbeat, were torn wider by even more surging power.

"Oh, shit!"

Ethan barked it out, low and sharp, and his eyes turned razor-cold.

Anya flinched at the sudden change. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at Emerald Castle yet before Ethan’s face darkened.

This wasn’t like anything on the road here. No ease. No teasing. Just a warning-level, bone-deep alertness.

She reached out and tugged the corner of his clothes.

"What is it?"

Ethan glanced down at her, then lifted a hand and ruffled her hair. His voice stayed steady, controlled.

"Uninvited guests. I need to clean things up."

With that, he triggered the battleship’s auto-landing program.

Runes and energy indicators across the console lit up in quick succession. The ship adjusted its course on its own, descending toward the designated landing zone.

Ethan didn’t wait for it to fully touch down. The instant the hatch opened, he dipped forward and shot out—his whole body turning into a streak of transparent light as he cut straight for the battlefield outside Emerald Castle.

Anya stood at the hatch, frowning, her delicate brows knitting.

He didn’t wait for her again.

A heartbeat later, she turned into a flash of red and chased after him.

The closer Ethan got, the clearer the chaos became.

The perimeter of Emerald Castle had completely devolved into a mess—energy blasts blooming everywhere, wreckage raining down, figures darting and slashing through the air in crisscrossing lines.

The high-altitude defenses on one side of the castle were still running. The energy barrier shuddered again and again under repeated bombardment. Counterfire lanced out from inside—only to be forcibly blocked by the warship formation outside.

Shouts, explosions, the shrill scream of energy tearing at space—everything blended together until the whole sky felt like it had been shoved into a boiling cauldron.

Ethan didn’t slow.

He dropped straight down from above, his right fist tightening bit by bit as he fell.

Transparent lightning coiled along his shoulder and down his arm. The air around his knuckles compressed, warping into ring after ring of distortion.

By the time he reached the air over the center of the battlefield, the power was packed to its limit.

Boom!

His fist slammed into the ground.

The earth split on the spot, and a shockwave exploded outward from the impact point, sweeping across the field.

Dust and debris erupted. Broken stone and twisted metal were thrown high into the air. Enemies locked in close combat nearby were shoved back by the blast, stumbling hard—some outright losing their footing and tumbling as they got hurled toward the distance.

"Master!"

Seraphine, fighting in the thick of it, was the first to recognize him. Surprise flashed through her eyes, and her voice cut through the chaos as it carried over the battlefield.