Chapter 1291: No Mercy in White
Ethan raised a hand and caught the shaft.
Cold power spread from his palm, but white lightning pressed it down, trapping it outside his skin like a film.
He turned toward a distant peak.
A woman stood on the snow-covered summit with a longbow in hand. When her first arrow was caught, she didn’t hesitate. She drew another from the quiver on her back and leveled it at Ethan again.
She really thought she could shoot him?
Ethan closed his fingers.
Crack.
The ice arrow snapped in two in his grip.
On the mountaintop, the woman released the string.
The second arrow tore free. Blue light flared at its tip, and the cold gathered as it flew—its killing power obviously far beyond the first.
Ethan watched her with flat, icy eyes.
A white energy sphere formed in his palm.
He lifted his arm and threw it like he was tossing a basketball.
Only this throw was straighter.
And faster.
The instant it left his hand, the sphere punched through the sound barrier. The shockwave kicked up the snow behind Ethan in a wide burst. Across the whole battlefield, that little disturbance was nothing—compared to how absurdly fast the sphere itself had become.
It drove forward along the ice arrow’s path, but in reverse.
The two attacks slid past each other.
Then the white sphere slammed directly into the head of the woman who’d been hiding on the summit.
White light detonated.
A round crater opened in the mountaintop snow, and her figure dissolved completely in the lightning.
Ethan narrowed his eyes for a moment.
Only after he confirmed she wasn’t reforming did he turn his attention back to the battlefield.
"A nobody dares sneak-attack me?" He flexed his fingers lightly.
"How do you even find the nerve?"
A sudden scream of pain rose from the enemy ranks.
Two figures burst out from the rear.
Blue light burned in both their eyes, their gazes locked on Ethan like hooks.
One rode an enormous wild boar, a heavy flail-and-chain gripped in her hand. The other stood atop a lump of living ice that moved on its own, her hands already gathering cold light.
The boar cavalier swung first.
The metal ball spun several tight circles in the air, then smashed toward Ethan with a ripping howl of wind.
At the same time, the other woman spread her palms.
Cold surged together high above. Ice slabs stacked one after another, assembling into a colossal iceberg that dropped straight down over Ethan’s head.
That kind of attack wasn’t going to trouble him.
White lightning stretched in Ethan’s hand, shaping itself into a bow.
The bow’s body was pure lightning, and near the string, several rotating rings of electricity hovered and spun.
Ethan drew.
A lightning arrow slowly took shape.
"You two against one," he said, looking at the woman maintaining the iceberg.
"That’s just not fair."
Arcs gathered along the shaft.
"Let me cool you off."
He released.
The bolt flashed through the wind and snow, too fast to track, shooting straight at the caster.
The boar cavalier saw the target and instantly drove her mount into her teammate, shoving her sideways.
The woman slipped off the original straight-line trajectory.
But when Ethan said something out loud, it usually happened.
As the lightning arrow reached the boar, it abruptly changed direction.
It skimmed along the boar’s coarse bristles, scorching a strip of mane into tight curls, then kept chasing the woman who’d been pushed away.
She’d barely steadied herself—
and the lightning arrow punched through her body.
Thunder-white light burst out her back.
The woman and the living ice under her feet were swallowed together by the white energy.
Ethan didn’t stop.
Another energy sphere condensed in his palm, and he fired it up at the falling iceberg.
White light drilled in from the iceberg’s underside.
Cracks raced upward.
Boom!
The iceberg shattered in midair.
Tens of thousands of ice chunks rained down over the battlefield, covering an area far beyond either army’s formation.
Ethan glanced at the boar cavalier still on her mount—then, almost thoughtfully, raised a layer of white shield around her.
Huge chunks slammed into the barrier one after another.
The shield blocked every fragment.
The boar cavalier didn’t appreciate it.
The blue light in her eyes flickered violently, rage spilling out of her. The flail spun at high speed above her head as she kicked the boar forward, charging straight through the falling ice toward Ethan.
"You killed my sisters!" she roared, whipping the chain.
"What the hell do you want?"
Ethan genuinely replayed the sequence in his head.
He’d only seen a corner of the iceberg. Then he came here. Then he heard the villagers talk about a guardian god.
If he had to name some grand objective...
Maybe he just wanted to unwind.
"I don’t want anything," Ethan answered honestly.
"I was bored."
That sentence detonated what little restraint the boar cavalier had left.
"You murdered my sisters and my soldiers for no reason!" She yanked the flail to her side.
"I’m going to kill you!"
Ethan watched her come, utterly unconcerned, lifting one hand toward her.
But before he could release anything, the boar felt something first.
Fear.
Its four legs locked.
Its massive body slid forward a short distance from inertia—then it shoved its snout hard into the slushy snow, belly flattening to the ground, and refused to move another inch.
Seraphina’s dragon body had already arrived in front of Ethan.
She lowered her head, icy dragon pupils pinning the boar cavalier in place.
Ethan’s eyes also lit with an ice-blue glow.
He rose higher, feeling that faint thread of frost power inside him—weak, but barely usable now.
Then, with a tired kind of resignation, he pointed at the boar and the woman on its back.
No extra nonsense.
Ice arrows appeared from every direction at once.
They condensed out of the wind and snow, every arrowhead aimed inward. At the same time, frozen pillars rose from the ground, sealing together into a cage around the boar cavalier and locking her inside.
Ethan descended slowly.
His boots came to rest on Seraphina’s dragon head.
From that height, with one hand behind his back, he looked down at the woman trapped in the ice cage.
His other hand tightened, inch by inch.
The ice prison compressed.
The walls squeezed inward, leaving the boar cavalier less and less space.
And at the same moment, the surrounding ice arrows launched.
Cold blades of light shot through the cage’s gaps, piercing the boar’s body from multiple directions.
A wailing scream rose in the blizzard.
The ice sealed completely.
If you wanted to stand against Ethan, you needed the strength to survive his anger.
The fight on the flank was over.
Which meant the front line had no excuse to lose.
With the three sisters gone, the warriors in thick armor lost their spine. They threw down their weapons, ripped off anything that slowed them, and scattered across the snowfield in panicked flight.