Boom!

Ataneya dragged him sideways and slammed him hard into the mountainside.

The cliff face collapsed on impact. Boulders and shattered slabs of rock poured down in an avalanche. The golden figure’s back was driven deep into the stone, fissures spiderwebbing out from the impact point. That fiery-red energy flooded along every crack, pouring inward, pressing his erupting golden ripples back down layer by layer.

Lily hovered in midair, her gaze tightening for a beat.

She’d already stepped out of Ethan, snow-white lightning still coiled around her like a living mantle. But after seeing that hit, she didn’t move in again. Instead, she slid farther to the side, putting distance between herself and the spreading crimson energy.

That power was dangerous.

Even Lily didn’t casually step into its shock radius.

Ethan stood where he was, his own heart pounding.

But he didn’t pause for long.

The golden figure’s level was too high. Relying on Ataneya alone to keep him pinned wasn’t safe. Ethan forced the chaotic power inside him into motion—translucent lightning and the last scraps of Infernal Primordial Power gathering into his palm—then he compressed them down into a small fiery-red sphere.

It wasn’t big.

But it was heavy in a way that made the air feel wrong.

The moment it formed, heat warped the atmosphere into a ring of twisted ripples. Ethan snapped his wrist, and the fiery-red sphere cut across the sky and smashed straight into the golden figure pinned against the rock.

The fear in the golden figure’s eyes deepened.

The power rolling off him was still heaven-shaking. Even the stray afterwaves made space tremble. But Ataneya’s aura countered him perfectly. Once that crimson energy burrowed into his bones and energy pathways, it moved like it was hunting—finding every weak point, severing the flow of his strength over and over.

Ethan’s sphere hit at that exact moment.

Bang!

It punched into the golden figure’s chest, compressed for a heartbeat—

Then detonated from the inside.

The crimson shockwave linked up with the energy Ataneya had already driven into him, and his chest caved in on the spot.

Ataneya didn’t give him a single breath.

One hand stayed locked around his throat. Her other hand rose, and fiery-red energy condensed in her palm again and again. Every time it formed, she hammered it down immediately—targeting his chest, his shoulder, his lower torso, his head... the spots where his power fluctuations were the most chaotic.

The first blow shattered his protective golden light.

The second split his shoulder.

The third forced crimson energy into his chest cavity, making the golden power inside burst apart instantly.

The golden figure tried to fight back, but every time he tried to draw on his strength, Ataneya’s presence crushed it first. The power that should’ve been able to blanket the entire sky was trapped inside him now, slamming around aimlessly—only making his body crack faster.

Lily had retreated even farther.

She hovered with her arms folded, snow-white lightning drifting lazily around her, but her eyes never left Ataneya. It wasn’t disdain.

It was vigilance—measuring, watching, refusing to underestimate.

Ethan’s nerves stayed tight as a wire.

The force Ataneya was unleashing now had completely blown past the pressure a normal Crimson Ultimate Hero should’ve carried. Every strike she threw made a ring of crimson裂纹—crimson fractures—flare through the surrounding space, and the mountain wall shuddered and caved inward another layer.

It didn’t take long before the golden figure’s body couldn’t hold.

His arm was blasted apart first. Then his chest split open. A massive gap was ripped through his waist by that crimson power. Golden energy tried to pull itself together and rebuild him, but the aura of Sanctified Darkness kept devouring and purifying it, leaving him no way to recover into a complete form.

Ataneya raised her hand one last time.

Fiery-red energy compressed into a razor-sharp cluster of light in her palm.

Then she brought it down.

BOOM!

The golden figure was smashed completely to pieces—shredded flesh and broken energy spraying outward—

Only to be stopped.

Ataneya flared a crimson curtain of light, catching everything, sealing the blast so it wouldn’t reach Ethan or the Emerald Castle army in the distance.

The entire battlefield went silent.

Only Ataneya stood before the ruined cliff, crimson energy still flowing slowly through her fingers.

And Lily remained far away, still keeping her distance.

Ethan took a moment to steady his breathing.

Even with the golden figure smashed and pinned under Ataneya’s barrage, the aura he left behind was still terrifying. In the shattered mountain wall, golden power kept struggling, trying to pull a divine soul and body back together. Every time that light flickered, tiny cracks shivered open in the nearby space.

At this point, Ethan couldn’t afford to be careful.

He forcibly mobilized everything he had left—translucent lightning, Infernal Primordial Power, and the chaotic energies in his body that still hadn’t settled. They surged through his meridians, rushed into his arm, and were compressed into a violently unstable mass of light.

Ethan stepped forward and shot straight to the golden figure’s side.

He raised his hand and slammed down, driving that power into the figure’s shoulder.

A rapid series of crackling blasts erupted at once.

Translucent lightning drilled into the shattered shoulder bone and tore along the still-burning golden energy inside him, ripping it apart from the inside. At the same time, the fiery-red energy Ataneya had left behind contracted inward. One from outside, one from within—those two forces locked together, trapping the golden figure’s remaining divine soul deep inside his broken body.

The world’s energies surged toward the point of impact.

The golden figure tried to struggle, but the moment his power rose, Ataneya’s aura crushed it back down. Meanwhile, Ethan’s translucent lightning kept spreading lower—through the chest, along the spine, up into the skull—grinding the remaining soul piece by piece.

It didn’t take long.

The golden figure—who’d only just appeared—went completely silent.

When the last thread of divine soul was shredded by the translucent lightning, the lingering golden glow in the rock face finally dimmed with it. The fiery-red energy slowly withdrew, leaving nothing but scorched fractures in the broken stone.

Ataneya, though, looked like she’d hit the jackpot.

She practically ran up to Ethan, giddy, the last wisps of crimson energy still trailing behind her like a gently swaying tailflame.

"Master!"

She looked up, eyes shining.

"I just crossed into a small world and absorbed all of its power. I’ve improved a lot—I can stay by your side all the time now."

For a second, Ethan couldn’t even find words.

He stared at Ataneya, the shock still refusing to settle. The power radiating off her was nothing like before. Between Shadow and Demonic Power, there was a strange new undertone—something not identical to Lily’s, but unmistakably carrying the mark of The Infernal Abyss.

If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he never would’ve believed Ataneya could grow this far in such a short time.

Ethan steadied his breathing, then pulled out a snow-white crystal and placed it in Ataneya’s hand.

The instant it appeared, the air around them went a little quieter. Inside the crystal, a faint thread of snow-white light drifted slowly—sealed within it was a portion of the Infernal Abyss power Ethan had obtained earlier.

"Release your power," Ethan said, watching her closely.

"Cover this with it. See if you can absorb it."

Ataneya didn’t hesitate. She nodded at once.

She cupped the snow-white crystal in both hands. Fiery-red energy spilled from her palms, then blended with Shadow, Chaos, and Demonic Power, wrapping the crystal layer by layer. At first, the snow-white power inside only trembled softly—

Then, like it had found something from the same source, it flowed out on its own.

Ataneya drew that power into her body.

No rejection. No backlash. No explosion.

The aura she released... matched the crystal’s power perfectly.