Chapter 1288: Something Shared His Design
Velmira hesitated.
She clearly didn’t want to leave Shedra, but she also didn’t dare get any closer to the power in Ethan’s hands. In the end, her humanoid body broke apart again, reforming into that enormous moth.
Her broad, thin wings beat the air, carrying her away.
Only after she retreated to a safer distance did she stop.
Even then, she didn’t relax.
The patterns on both pairs of wing-membranes split open one after another, revealing a dense scatter of eyes. Every single one aimed at Ethan, tracking him with obsessive focus.
After flying a short distance, Velmira seemed to suddenly remember the most important thing.
"Oh—right!"
She raised her voice.
"Her name is Shedra!"
Ethan lifted a hand and rubbed his forehead.
Shedding.
Shedra.
That name really was... painfully on the nose.
The energy he’d just pulled back into his body gathered again in his palm.
White lightning flowed forward from his wrist, forming into a violent sphere. Arcs snapped off the surface, and even the space around it bowed slightly to either side under the pressure.
Cradling the energy ball, Ethan walked toward Shedra step by step.
Far away, Velmira felt that force and instantly tensed, her wings drawn tight.
She spun in the air twice, then finally made up her mind and lunged forward to stop him—
and immediately froze.
A sheet of ice had appeared beneath her.
Frost crawled up from her feet, locking Velmira in place midair. She beat her wings hard, but her body didn’t move forward even an inch.
Behind her, Queen Elowen let out a lazy yawn.
She was idly playing with a small, perfectly round ice marble. It rolled between her fingers, reflecting a faint blue sheen.
When Elowen noticed everyone looking at her, she gave a casual little wave.
Then she lowered her head again, bored, and went right back to spinning the ice ball around.
The group exchanged glances.
No one pleaded Velmira’s case.
All eyes shifted back to Ethan.
Poor Velmira could only hang there, frozen in place, taking wave after wave of cold seeping up through her feet.
Brutal.
Just... brutal.
Shedra had noticed Ethan’s approach, too.
The pressure overhead grew heavier and heavier, forcing loose stones to press flat to the ground. She lifted her massive head, blood-red eyes locking onto the figure in the air, jaws parting wide.
Purplish-red energy rose from deep in her throat.
At first it was just a pinpoint glow.
Then it swelled into a sphere. Deep violet and blood-red swapped places inside it in constant rotation, making the surface flicker between bright and dim.
Ethan stopped.
The more he looked at that energy sphere, the more wrong it felt.
Sometimes it was violet.
Sometimes it turned completely red.
Ethan lowered his gaze to the white lightning ball in his own hand, comparing them side by side.
Aside from the particles that made up the energy and the outer color... the method of compression, the internal pull, even the attack structure—
they were almost identical.
"Did I just run into my long-lost twin?" Ethan muttered.
He glanced at Shedra’s body.
"Except she’s... a female snake."
He clicked his tongue.
"Yeah. That comparison was sloppy."
Ethan held off on his opening strike.
He wanted to see what would actually happen when Shedra’s purplish-red sphere collided with his white lightning—what the real difference would be.
The sphere in Shedra’s mouth kept growing.
The others didn’t react much.
Ethan liking to "study" opponents mid-fight wasn’t exactly new. As long as he was still standing at the front, nobody rushed to interfere.
Velmira, stuck at the very back in a block of ice, got more and more panicked.
She’d been hit by one of Shedra’s energy spheres before.
Just once, and the power inside her had almost been drained dry.
So what would this one do?
Velmira lifted one pair of thin wings to cover her face.
But the eyes on her wings didn’t lie.
Those eyes stayed wide open, staring from every angle, refusing to miss a single detail.
Shedra didn’t stop at charging her mouth.
Her tail didn’t stop, either.
That body—long enough it practically looked like the Great Wall—began to writhe.
Her tail swept the ground, first ripping up a spray of shattered rock, then whipping upward toward Ethan in the air. The shadow filled his vision. Before the tip even arrived, the wind pressure it dragged along had already slammed into him.
Ethan didn’t shift into black particles.
If he vanished as a target, Shedra’s tail would likely keep going and slam straight into the teammates behind him.
So he raised both fists and took it head-on.
From far back, Auri saw the moment and thought Ethan couldn’t handle it alone.
She immediately called the other three little partners.
Four streaks of different-colored light shot from behind, dragging bright tails like four meteors, and plunged into Ethan one after another.
Boom!
Shedra’s tail collided with Ethan’s fists.
A ring of compressed air exploded outward from the point of impact.
Nearby stone blasted up and out. The ground gouged into a deep trench as Shedra’s body dragged. Ethan only slid back a short distance before his arms flexed—then he drove forward, punching again and blasting the tail away.
Shedra’s tail lost control and slammed into the mountainside.
Even the purplish-red sphere forming in her mouth wobbled from the shock. Power leaked from the corner of her jaws, scorching dark patches into the earth.
Ethan glanced inward, checking his body.
"...Why are you guys here?"
The four little ones had zero intention of leaving.
"I’m fine in a one-on-one."
He looked at Shedra as she lifted her tail again.
"She’s just a mid–35 Tier. If I can’t even handle her, how am I supposed to show my face later?"
He tried to talk them out of it for a while.
The four presences stayed lodged in him, not one of them willing to back out.
Ethan had no choice but to give up.
With them helping, he actually had to be more careful with his output. He tightened his arms, deliberately dialing back the power in his next punch.
Even so—
when his fist landed on Shedra’s side, that enormous serpent body still flew sideways.
Crash!
Shedra slammed into the mountain ahead.
The cliff face caved in from the point of impact, chunks of rock rolling down the slope in an avalanche. Her long body was crushed into the mountain, leaving only a section of tail exposed outside.
In the back, Velmira went rigid.
She tried again to shift the ice under her feet.
It didn’t budge.
Worse—the cold intensified, crawling higher up her legs.
Velmira stopped struggling immediately.
Only when she stayed still did the chill ease slightly, and a faint warmth finally returned to her body.