Phoenix Queen Ignara’s pupils snapped tight.

Even she clearly hadn’t expected him to suppress her Eternal Flame that easily.

But she didn’t back off.

The next second—

The power inside her surged again.

Rumble—! 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

An ocean of Eternal Flame erupted from her body.

This time, what appeared in the sky wasn’t a phantom phoenix.

It was something bigger. Stranger. A towering, ominous outline made of fire.

That silhouette was pure Eternal Flame—utterly clean, not a trace of impurity.

The instant it formed, the surrounding space began collapsing in wide swaths. The heat was so insane it scorched parts of the void itself into hollowed-out cavities.

Behind Phoenix Queen Ignara, the sky completely transformed into a world of flame.

When the golden man saw it, his expression finally shifted.

He obviously hadn’t expected her to release Eternal Flame this pure.

He raised his palm at once.

Massive amounts of energy rushed into his hand.

Boom!

The heavens shook.

That power rapidly took shape as the phantom of a colossal mountain, pressing straight down against the Eternal Flame.

The moment the two forces collided—

The Eternal Flame rolled upward in a violent surge, spreading crazily along the mountain’s surface. Scarlet-gold fire swallowed the entire mass in seconds, wrapping the whole "mountain" in a blazing shell.

A lot of the Emerald Castle warriors watching lit up, excitement flashing in their eyes.

But just when everyone thought Phoenix Queen Ignara had the upper hand—

From the mountain’s core,

a bizarre humming sound suddenly rang out.

Hmmm—!

The next instant—

An even more overbearing energy detonated.

BOOM!!!

The scarlet-gold flames were forcibly blasted apart from the inside.

Countless streams of Eternal Flame scattered like shards of light, spraying in every direction as nearby space fractured again and again. Meanwhile, the mountain phantom—still carrying its remaining power—kept grinding forward.

Then—

The golden man stepped ahead, slow and deliberate.

He lifted his palm.

And gave a casual, almost gentle push toward where Phoenix Queen Ignara stood.

In an instant,

it was like heaven and earth had received an order.

Space itself, the energy of the void, and the power of that golden world all started collapsing inward at the same time—compressing toward the center in a crushing tide, bearing down on Phoenix Queen Ignara from every direction.

Layer after layer of space folded shut.

It didn’t take long.

She was locked inside it, wrapped tight in the middle.

Ethan’s pupils contracted hard when he saw Phoenix Queen Ignara being forced back by that golden power.

The light above the battlefield had already turned into chaos. Phoenix fire churned high overhead, and the lingering shadow of a golden giant pressed beneath the cloud layer. Every time the two forces slammed into each other, the surrounding space buckled—ripples spreading outward, visible to the naked eye.

Ignara’s flames were still ferocious, but the space around her was being compressed bit by bit. The edges of her fiery wings kept getting torn open by golden light—only for the Eternal Flame to stitch them back together a heartbeat later.

Ethan could see it clearly.

If this kept going, Phoenix Queen Ignara was going to get dragged into a dead end sooner or later.

But he couldn’t go to her.

His body was pinned in midair. In front of him was that raging void-world, and behind him was the world energy he’d forcefully drawn out.

The two forces kept tearing at each other across his body, like two skies about to slam together. If he loosened up even a little, the entire battlefield could get ripped open by warped space.

Ethan’s knuckles were white with strain. Transparent energy spread out from his palms in layers, barely holding back the void-world’s continued squeeze into reality.

Every tremor that came through hit him in the chest like a hammer. His breathing stuttered, and a rusty, metallic taste rose in his throat.

For the first time in this fight, he felt truly helpless.

Then the temperature in the air dropped.

Not normal cold—something that seeped out from deep inside space itself.

The rolling firelight was pressed down. The scattered sparks of energy hanging over the battlefield slowed in midair, like an invisible sheet of ice had wrapped around them.

In the next heartbeat, extreme frost power spread from the distance—running along the sky, the cloud layer, and even the shattered seams of space—until it swallowed the entire world in its reach.

Queen Elowen emerged from the ice fog.

She didn’t strike right away. She lifted her eyes to the golden man instead. Beneath her feet, frost formed ring after ring of transparent patterns. Each ring expanded outward, and every time it did, the glow around the golden man wavered, forced down just a fraction.

"This guy’s power should be coming from some kind of dimensional space," Queen Elowen said. Her voice carried through the wind and snow, landing clearly in everyone’s ears. "And he’s already completely fused with it."

She didn’t blink as she stared him down.

"If we don’t take him out fast, he’ll probably be able to call down even stronger power from that dimension."

Phoenix Queen Ignara heard her. The firelight in her eyes darkened.

She didn’t waste time replying—just gave a single, sharp nod.

The next instant, the phoenix shadow behind her spread its wings. Eternal Flame poured out from between feathers, tail, and talons, gathering in front of her into a churning scarlet-gold sea of fire.

The flames didn’t lash outward.

They tightened with her breathing, drawing in, compressing—until the heat was so concentrated the surrounding space started to glow faintly red.

At the same moment, Queen Elowen raised her palm.

Frost climbed up from her fingertips. First it became crystalline feather-bones—then wings coated in ice crystals, a long elegant neck, a razor beak, and finally a pair of ice-blue eyes lit from within by Divine Power.

When that frost phoenix formed in front of her, it didn’t scream.

All it gave was a deep, low crack—like ice splitting from the inside.

The moment flame and frost drifted close, a lot of the enemy soldiers instinctively held their breath.

In their minds, those two forces were supposed to reject each other—blow apart the instant they touched. But the Eternal Flame didn’t devour the frost, and the extreme frost didn’t snuff the fire out.

Scarlet-gold threads of flame wound around the frost phoenix’s wings. Ice-blue radiance spread along the edges of that fire. Under the pull of Divine Power, the two forces actually started to lock together—bit by bit—like gears finally catching.

Ethan saw it too.

He’d thought it would be a brute-force stack, two attacks shoved together.

But when the two queens’ powers truly met, he realized it wasn’t that at all.

At the core of the Eternal Flame was a sacred presence. And deep inside Queen Elowen’s extreme frost, Divine Power flowed as well. The two energies found the single point that could connect—

and then expanded outward from it in a rush.

Hummm.

A heavy vibration rolled down from the depths of the sky.

In the next second, a Frost Phoenix wrapped in Eternal Flame hovered above the battlefield. Its body was forged from extreme ice, but its wings burned with scarlet-gold fire.

Every time it beat those wings, frost spilled down from above—only for firelight to burn out from inside that frost. The two forces spread in a braided tide, squeezing the surrounding space until fine cracks started to form.

Those cracks crawled outward from the Frost Phoenix like a spiderweb, spreading across the entire sky.

The golden man hung in midair, and the light around him was no longer stable.

What had been a solid golden aura kept coming apart around his shoulders, chest, and the edges of his arms—then snapping back as he forced it into his body again. His expression turned ugly. The dimensional power around him started stuttering in uneven waves.

But he couldn’t retreat.

If he took even a step back, the Frost Phoenix would tear open his connection to that dimensional space.

And if that happened, he wouldn’t just lose his ability to block Phoenix Queen Ignara and Queen Elowen—he’d lose the borrowed power itself. It would collapse on him.

The golden man lifted both arms, dragging every scrap of strength he had left toward his chest.

Golden light condensed into a blinding sphere—then stretched outward, shaping into a raging golden torrent wrapped around dimensional force. Under his feet, space caved into a shallow ring, like he’d stepped on something soft.

He shot straight toward the Frost Phoenix.

The Frost Phoenix moved too.

It threw its wings wide. Eternal Flame surged along the edges, while extreme frost erupted outward from within its body. The two powers fused into a single strike—ice and fire interwoven—crashing down from the sky toward the golden man.

The instant the golden torrent slammed into the Frost Phoenix’s chest, the sky went silent for one breath.

Then a shriek of explosion tore across the battlefield.

Rumble—!

The shockwave burst from the collision point, crushing the cloud layer first—then hammering into nearby enemy warships hard enough to make their shields flare violently.

The air warped like it was being kneaded by a giant hand. Space rifts yawned open and snapped shut in the aftershock. Soldiers fighting in the distance staggered back, nearly thrown off their feet. A few enemies dropped straight to their knees on the decks, their weapons slipping from their grip as the world bucked under them.