Ethan never took his eyes off him.

In the brief gap where the two surging forces whipped around and blanked out their sightlines, Ethan dropped his center of gravity. His legs coiled. Transparent lightning crawled from his ankles up his spine.

In the next breath, he shot out along the edge of the shockwave—his whole body turning into a streak of electricity as he cut through the exploding energy turbulence.

The willow man had only just managed to suppress the aftershock from the energy sphere—

and Ethan was already in his face.

His fist came down.

He didn’t give the man time to rebuild his defense. Transparent lightning crushed itself onto the knuckles. White light ran up Ethan’s arm into his shoulder, then poured into the exact point where the punch landed.

The fist hit dead center on the willow man’s shoulder. At the moment of contact, flesh, bone, and energy all gave off the same muffled boom.

The willow man was launched backward.

He stumbled back dozens of steps. Every step cratered the deck under his feet, until his back slammed into the outer cabin wall and the whole section of metal bowed inward. The willow strands hanging from his chest whipped violently, and the power that had been smothering the sky lurched into disorder with them.

Ethan didn’t give him room to breathe.

He surged forward again, that brutal force inside him pouring out without pause. Transparent lightning tightened from every direction, clamping down on the willow man’s arms, legs, and torso.

The man struggled to lift the two willow branches, but Ethan planted a boot on his wrist and drove his other hand into his shoulder, forcing him down.

Boom!

The willow man was slammed flat. The deck beneath him shattered.

He still tried to fight. The willow strands on his chest and back lashed wildly, trying to shove Ethan off.

Ethan’s pressure only stacked heavier. Transparent lightning drilled into the cracks in the deck, sealing the space around him like a cage. The willow man was pinned so hard even lifting his head became a struggle.

Only then did Ethan open the system.

A data panel unfolded in front of his eyes. His gaze flicked over the scrolling information, fast—until it landed on the willow-strand data tied to the man.

Almost immediately, Ethan caught something off.

Inside those willow strands was a bizarre kind of life force. It wasn’t like normal energy that simply detonated. It wasn’t like dimensional power that only existed to destroy.

It was more like a source that could keep growing, keep spreading—something that, in the right energy environment, could continuously generate power.

Ethan kept reading, and his eyes slowly brightened.

In other words—if you dropped these willow strands into a suitable energy field, you could make that power "produce" itself over and over, almost without a ceiling.

His breathing deepened.

If he brought this back to Emerald Castle and integrated it into their mineral-resource system, Emerald Castle’s total energy reserves could double before long.

That was worth more than killing this guy.

Ethan looked down at the willow man pinned under him. There wasn’t a flicker of hesitation in his eyes.

One hand held the man down. With the other, he grabbed the willow strands on his body and yanked.

When the first strand tore free, the willow man’s whole body convulsed. A gush of that strange energy burst from his chest.

The second. The third. The fourth.

Ethan ripped them out in a row and let them fall near his feet. Every strand that left the body made the man’s presence drop another notch.

The willow man thrashed, clawing at Ethan’s arms, trying to stop him.

Ethan drove a fist down.

The punch slammed into the man’s chest, and the deck shuddered with it.

The willow man’s body sank deeper into the broken metal. His arms went slack.

Ethan didn’t slow down.

He kept stripping every last willow strand off him—and kept hammering his chest at the same time.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Each hit sent chunks of energy bursting out of the willow man’s body.

That once-all-encompassing, suffocating force began to unravel. The glow at the torn willow stumps dimmed fast. Under the continuous, brutal impacts, his chest caved in.

It didn’t take long.

His body finally couldn’t hold together anymore.

With one last heavy blow, he broke apart completely—smashed into pieces that scattered across the shattered deck.

Ethan straightened up and gathered the willow strands into his hand.

He looked down at them, and a rare spark of excitement flashed through his eyes. Life-force still flowed inside the branches. Even torn from their original body, they hadn’t withered right away.

The energy pulsed gently in his palm, like it was still waiting for a new host.

Then—

A heavy energy fluctuation rolled in from the distant sky.

Ethan looked up.

Not far away, a new figure appeared out of nowhere, hanging high in the air. The power spilling off him was no weaker than the willow man’s had been.

The clouds around him were shoved aside by his presence. The air under his feet warped like heat haze.

In his hand, he gripped a strange stone. Its surface flashed again and again, and power was rapidly building inside it.

The figure lowered his gaze toward the warship deck. His eyes swept over the bodies strewn everywhere—and over the willow man’s smashed remains—and his voice dropped, thick with anger.

"Didn’t think I’d still be a step late," he said. "And you actually killed so many of my kin."

He raised the stone high overhead.

"Today, I’m going to avenge them."

The instant the words left his mouth, the power inside the strange stone fully released.

A violent pressure slammed down from above, swallowing the warship first—then spreading outward, wrapping the surrounding sky and earth inside it like a closing fist.

Ethan stared up at the newcomer, the freshly taken willow strands still clenched in his hand, and his gaze sank colder by the second.

With the stone lifted high, that savage energy pressed down from the heavens—blanketing the crippled warship, then expanding like an ever-growing net across the world.

The light in the air was squeezed dim. The edges of the cloud layer were carved into rings of shattered patterns. Even several warships still fighting in the distance began to drift slightly off course, tugged by the spreading force.

The first thing Ethan noticed wasn’t the man’s face.

It was the chaotic weave of elemental power around him.

Flame. Killing cold. Storm-wind. A heavy earth-yellow glow. And several other fluctuations that were harder to name—everything crammed into a single body.

They weren’t truly fused.

They were being forcibly twisted together by something deeper. Every time a pulse rolled out of him, tiny rips opened in the surrounding space—only to be pressed shut again by the next wave of energy.

Ethan’s breathing caught.

This guy was stronger than the golden figure in the sky.

Not just "more powerful" in raw aura—his structure was more dangerous.

The golden man’s strength came from a dimensional space. It was brutal, but it had a clear source and a clear boundary. This one’s elements were too messy, too violent. If he let them all loose, the world around them could get torn into pieces.

The enemy troops on the shattered warship sensed it too.

A few soldiers who’d just managed to crawl up from the edge of the deck cracks looked up. The fear on their faces hadn’t even faded yet, and their bodies were already locking up again.

They didn’t look relieved that reinforcements had arrived.

If anything, they backed away instinctively—like they knew when that stone really came down, it wasn’t going to spare them either.