Ethan gripped the shaft of the spear protruding from his stomach. With a guttural grunt, he ripped the weapon through his own flesh, the metal sliding out with a sickening wet sound. He spat a mouthful of thick, dark blood onto the stones—blood that, if an expert had been present to witness it, pulsed with a faint, swirling mixture of amethyst light and abyssal black.

The wound began to knit together almost instantly, tendrils of Void energy stitching his organs back into place. But it was his eyes that truly changed. The violet light was swallowed by a terrifying, absolute black, and in the center of each pupil, a tiny, jagged amethyst symbol began to coalesce.

The twenty remaining soldiers, veterans of a thousand planetary harvests, felt a primal chill. This wasn’t just energy; it was the presence of an apex predator.

Ethan’s mind fractured. The cold logic he usually maintained was incinerated by a sudden, explosive awakening. His cultivation—the Half-step Spiritual Core—erupted like a dormant volcano.

BOOM.

The shockwave flattened the surrounding trees and sent the surviving guards stumbling back. They looked at him, their faces pale with existential dread. They were pinned down by the World Matrix, their powers suppressed to a fraction of their true potential by the planet’s laws. But Ethan? He stood there radiating a power that felt unchained, as if the world itself had granted him a divine exemption.

"Merda... Run! Run now!" the commander screamed, his bravado vanishing as he felt the sheer weight of Ethan’s aura.

Su Ni backed away, his silk robes catching on a jagged rock as he tripped. The arrogance that had defined him for a lifetime was gone, replaced by a cold, paralyzing terror. He finally understood the Deacon’s message. It wasn’t an exaggeration. It was a funeral dirge.

"You... you monster!" Su Ni shrieked. "The heavens will never allow you to exist! Look! Even the world wants you dead!"

As if answering his cry, the sky above them churned into a violent maelstrom. Colossal, serpentine Electric Dragons formed from the clouds, their scales crackling with enough voltage to vaporize a city. This was the World Matrix sensing a power that threatened its balance.

Far below, the Royal matriarch and the gathered elite watched the sky with bated breath. The matriarch gripped her staff, her knuckles white. She considered breaking her own seal, risking her life to help Ethan withstand the heavens, but the sheer scale of the lightning made her hesitate. It was a gamble where the only prize was a shared grave.

Su Ni saw the dragons and began to laugh hysterically, pointed a shaking finger at Ethan. "See?! The Heavens help me! You cannot be contained by this world! The world wants you dead! Who the hell do you think you are to oppose us? You’re just an insect! Garbage! Die in the lightning!"

Ethan slowly tilted his head back. His black-and-amethyst eyes met the gaze of the lead Electric Dragon as it coiled to strike.

As the creature felt the ancient, suffocating aura of Lord Amethyst radiating from Ethan’s core—the aura of a being who had once commanded the stars—the dragon’s roar turned into a whimper. The colossal serpents of lightning didn’t strike. Instead, they began to recoil, their massive forms retreating into the clouds as if they had just stared into the face of their own creator.

The dragons of the world were terrified of him.

Ethan turned his gaze back to Su Ni, the silence that followed more terrifying than any thunder.

"The heavens don’t help you," Ethan whispered, his voice vibrating through the very earth. "They’re just waiting for me to finish."

Ethan’s silhouette flickered, and in that microsecond, the reality of the mountain range was rewritten. If he had been fast before, he was now a cosmic anomaly. He didn’t reach for his dagger; his fury was too primal, too ravenous for steel. He used his bare fists.

BOOM.

Each strike didn’t just kill; it annihilated. The first punch connected with an elite guard, and the resulting shockwave didn’t stop at the body—it tore through the ridge behind him, reducing ancient granite to fine, grey dust. The world, suppressed by the Matrix, simply lacked the structural density to withstand Ethan’s unbridled power. Enormous craters, miles wide, began to pockmark the landscape as Ethan vented his rage.

The twenty guards didn’t die as men; they were detonated into a fine, crimson mist.

Ethan stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving. As he inhaled, the blood-mist didn’t settle. It began to swirl upward, drawn toward him by an irresistible gravity. The miniature black hole he used to manifest in his palm now appeared within his open maw, a swirling vortex of absolute nothingness. He was breathing in the very essence of his enemies, devouring their life force and their lingering terror.

As the energy surged into him, the spectral image of a Void Nightmare—a creature of shifting shadows and infinite teeth—superimposed itself over his human form.

Su Ni, collapsed in the dirt and trembling, stared at the flickering apparition. His mind, usually filled with arrogance and silk, suddenly recalled the dusty, forbidden manuscripts his grandfather had forced him to study. He was a tyrannical brat, yes, but he was a scholar of the Sect’s deepest archives. He knew the ancient lore.

"No..." Su Ni’s voice was a strangled wheeze. "A Void Nightmare in human form? This is... this is impossible. It only happened once, and that was..."

He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. His mind raced to the legends used to terrify children in the Northern Peaks—the tales of a shadow that consumed entire galaxies. The Void King will come for you if you are wicked...

He realized then that they hadn’t stumbled upon a backwater world of ants. They had accidentally kicked the nest of a legend that was supposed to be a myth.

"You’re not a cultivator," Su Ni whimpered, his eyes reflecting the devouring darkness of Ethan’s gaze. "You’re the end of everything."

--------------------

From this moment forward, to avoid confusion regarding cultivation ranks, I will include this footer with the current established levels.

Note: These are only the ranks mentioned so far to avoid spoilers.

Body Refinement Realm

Skin Refinement / Bone Refinement / Organ Refinement

Spiritual Gathering Realm

Spiritual Perception / Spiritual Mist / Spiritual Condensation

Spiritual Core Realm

Core Solidification / Core Awakening / Spiritual Collapse (Half-step Core)

Spiritual Soul Realm

Spiritual Soul Awakening / [Locked] / [Locked]