Chapter 1183: The Runes Beneath
The excitement in Ethan’s eyes was impossible to hide now.
This proved it—Ataneya’s energy really did come from The Infernal Abyss. At the very least, she could genuinely merge with that kind of power now, instead of only borrowing it from an external source.
Right now, Infernal Primordial Power was still one of the most brutal forces in this world.
But among Ethan’s people, the ones who could truly wield it were rare. If Ataneya could control a similar power, then it meant his followers weren’t incapable of fusing with Infernal Primordial Power. They’d just been missing the right pathway... and the right source.
That discovery was worth more than killing a single terrifying enemy.
Ethan didn’t stay where he was.
He turned toward a cliff not far away. With a flicker, he vanished—and landed between the rock faces. Beneath his feet, a pulse of energy tugged at his senses. It was muffled by layers of stone, but it still carried a faint resemblance to the Infernal Abyss.
Ethan raised his palm. Translucent lightning gathered in his hand, and he slammed it into the ground.
Boom!
The earth beneath the cliff collapsed on the spot.
His strike punched straight through the bedrock. Cracks raced downward, widening fast, until a massive chasm yawned open. Heat-haze energy surged up from below, and in the darkness there was even a faint trace of golden light.
Ethan didn’t hesitate.
He jumped in.
As he dropped, he did feel it—waves that resembled Infernal Primordial Power. Dense. Heavy. Settled at the bottom like it had been sealed underground for ages. A thought flashed through his mind immediately.
Maybe this was another small world left behind by the Infernal Abyss.
If he could draw out all the energy here, maybe he could forge another person capable of wielding Infernal Primordial Power.
But the moment he finally reached the bottom, the expectation on his face stopped short.
There was no true Infernal Primordial Power here.
No sea of energy. No familiar, savage abyssal aura.
Only pitch-black rock walls... and countless golden runes floating across them.
They were embedded one after another in the stone, like someone had carved them into the entire chasm. Each rune pulsed and flowed slowly, radiating a presence that felt violently strong. They linked together, forming circuit after circuit, until in the center of the abyss they converged into a gigantic vortex of energy.
The whole underground space trembled.
The brief disappointment on Ethan’s face faded almost immediately.
He stepped forward and reached out, touching one of the golden runes.
The instant his fingertip met its surface, a weight far heavier than he’d expected surged up his arm and slammed into his body. It wasn’t pure Infernal Primordial Power—yet it was sharper than ordinary Infernal Primordial Power, harder to control, and older... so old it made his skin prickle.
Ethan’s eyes lit up.
Maybe other people wouldn’t recognize what this was worth.
He did.
The power leaking from these runes was even stronger than the Infernal Primordial Power he currently commanded. And they were probably still from the Infernal Abyss—just sealed here in a different form.
He didn’t hesitate again.
Ethan reached out and plucked the golden runes off the wall, one by one.
Each time a rune tore free, it let out a thin, humming tremor, and part of the surrounding energy circuits snapped with it. Ethan grabbed them and drove them straight into his own body. The moment they entered, they didn’t settle—they crashed wildly through his meridians, grinding against his translucent lightning and Infernal Primordial Power, sparking constant friction.
The energy vortex in the abyss began to destabilize.
Lily’s expression turned cold the moment she saw it.
She stepped in and grabbed Ethan by the shoulder.
"You’d better think this through."
There was a rare gravity in her voice.
"The energy coming off those things is insanely strong. If you keep shoving all of it into your body like this, the consequences—"
Her fingers tightened.
"You might literally blow yourself apart."
Ethan just smiled.
Of course he could feel the danger. The instant those golden runes entered him, his meridians lit up with a burning pain. But he also knew that if he let this kind of power slip away, he might never find it again.
So he kept going, pulling in the remaining rune power.
One. Two. Three.
More and more golden runes sank into him. The energy inside Ethan turned more violent by the second. Before long, his body began to swell. Golden lines surfaced beneath his skin, like glowing veins, and translucent lightning sprayed out between those lines—only to be forced back in by the newly absorbed rune power.
Everyone nearby changed expression.
Ataneya rushed in first, fiery-red energy pouring from her palms as she tried to stabilize the rampaging turbulence inside him. Lily didn’t stop him anymore. She released snow-white lightning of her own, pressing down on the rune power that was about to rip Ethan’s body apart.
The other Emerald Castle powerhouses moved too.
Strands of energy landed on Ethan one after another, all of them trying to keep him from collapsing.
But right as they poured their strength in, an unnatural boom sounded from inside Ethan.
It wasn’t the sound of a body failing.
It sounded more like something that had been compressed to the limit... finally finding an outlet.
Ethan shot up out of the abyss like a cannon.
He rose into the high sky, golden runes and translucent lightning weaving around him in a frenzy. All the berserk power gathered over his head, condensing rapidly into a gigantic translucent lightning sphere. Inside it, golden runes spun nonstop, and every rotation carved tiny cracks into the sky.
Ethan lifted his hand and hurled that lightning sphere toward the mountains in the distance.
RUMBLE—!
The sphere slammed into the mountain range’s center.
Translucent thunderlight detonated from within. Golden runes raced outward along the fractures in the rock like living script. The entire range shook violently—then was torn open from the middle. Peaks collapsed in a chain of explosions, and in the end the mountains were flattened into a wasteland, wiped level by brute force.
Wild aura swept across heaven and earth.
With the range blown open, the mineral resources buried deep underground were fully exposed.
Blinding golden energy surged up from the split earth in an endless stream, punching into the sky. It didn’t disperse right away. Instead, it formed massive vortices—one after another—hanging between heaven and earth. Each vortex was saturated with the dense aura of ore veins. Even from far away, you could feel the terrifying value packed inside.
Everyone from Emerald Castle stared, eyes wide.
They’d never seen power this dazzling.
The shock lasted maybe a heartbeat—then nobody could stay calm anymore. Fallen Star Guard, the Powered Combat Armor troops, the goblin engineering teams, and the rest of Emerald Castle surged forward.
They drank in the energy pouring out of the earth with naked hunger.
Golden light flooded into their bodies. The exhaustion from the battle was washed away in seconds, replaced by rapidly rising auras—and excitement they couldn’t suppress.
Ataneya was more excited than anyone.
She’d just fused with Infernal Abyss power, and her aura was nothing like it used to be. The energy entering her didn’t simply pile into a single core—it was like it kicked open another door inside her. New storage vortices appeared in her, several of them, each one rotating slowly as it absorbed outside energy and converted it into something she could use.
The change kept her body faintly overheated, like she was running hot all the time.
Shadow, Chaos, Demonic Power, and that newly fused Infernal Abyss aura flowed through her together without rejecting one another. If anything, they’d found a new equilibrium—one that let her pull more energy from the world with every breath.
Lily was even more straightforward.
She’d only just re-formed a real body, and she was nowhere near her peak. For her, the richer and purer the energy, the more valuable it was. The moment that golden torrent erupted from underground, the snow-white lightning around her automatically coiled up and dragged the purest portion into her body, strand by strand.
The others didn’t waste the chance either.
Fallen Star Guard, Powered Combat Armor soldiers, goblin engineers, and every other expert present absorbed like their lives depended on it. Golden energy seeped into armor seams, skin, and weapons. Their post-battle fatigue was scrubbed away and replaced with stronger and stronger waves of power.
Before long, the exposed energy in this region had been absorbed for the most part.
The golden vortices between the mountains gradually shrank. The light pouring from the cracks in the earth dimmed little by little. Everyone wore expressions they couldn’t hide—because energy resources on this level were rare in the entire world.
But right as they were still celebrating and absorbing—
The sky in the distance suddenly split open with a massive dimensional rift.
Its edges glowed with violet radiance. Space peeled back layer by layer under some razor-sharp force, releasing a deep, tearing groan. And then a figure bathed in purple stepped out of the裂缝—out of the rift.
That person’s entire body was studded with violet gemstones.
Shoulders. Chest. Arms. Waist. Even near the forehead—crystals of different sizes were embedded across him. Every gemstone pulsed with a slow inner glow, radiating an aura that was brutally strong. Those auras linked together, forming a purple energy field that held him suspended in midair.