Ethan stood at the highest point of the mine, watching it all unfold, and he understood the reality of this world with brutal clarity.
There were simply too many races here.
Conquering this place wasn’t sothing you finished with one or two battles.
Behind every Castle could be a different civilization. Every mine had an original owner. And inside any "ordinary" canyon, there could be sothing like that fractured Infernal Abyss pocket world—waiting under the surface.
They needed a solid foothold. A fortress they could hold.
This wasn’t Erald Castle’s first expedition.
Once Ethan’s orders went out, every unit slid smoothly back into its familiar expedition structure. The goblin engineering teams cleared a central zone first, then unfolded foundation modules.
Massive tal pillars were driven deep into the bedrock. Energy pipelines were laid along the mine’s natural contours. One defensive tower base after another rose into place.
Before long, a tall encampnt was standing on top of the mine.
The walls were temporary, but thick enough to matter, with energy crystals pried from nearby deposits embedded into the surface for reinforcent.
Inside the camp, rows of temporary Creature Dwellings went up in quick succession. The surrounding energy was drawn by those buildings, funneling fast toward the camp’s center.
Above the entire site, a ring of semi-transparent shielding began to take shape.
As the defensive line stabilized, Ethan finally let himself breathe a little.
Then—right when everyone was working at full tilt—a heavy roar rolled across the distant sky.
Rumble!
Silver light pressed in from behind the clouds like a falling star. It moved terrifyingly fast, tearing a long, jagged gash across the sky as it ca. The surrounding energy was shoved aside by brute force, forced into curling streams.
A mont later, a figure wreathed in silver slamd into the airspace above the mine.
It was a giant.
His body looked like it had been condensed from silver energy, a tallic sheen constantly flowing over his surface. There was no obvious armor—no plates, no seams—yet he looked heavier than armor, like a living mass of compressed terror. Even his breathing made the space around him contract in subtle pulses.
Ethan’s eyes brightened with interest.
This silver giant wasn’t weak.
And his energy structure was strange—nothing like Solaryn, Kharvexis, or the Titan Turtle. Ethan shifted his weight, ready to move in and test him—
But soone beat him to it.
A small figure flashed forward first.
Feylora appeared in front of the silver giant, suspended in midair. Behind her, the camp’s energy shield was still forming; beneath her was the mine Erald Castle had just seized. She tipped her chin up at the towering figure, voice steady and refusing to yield an inch.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "And why did you co to our territory?"
The line was shalessly domineering.
Because by any objective asure, Erald Castle was the invader here—and the other side, no matter what, was a native.
The silver giant looked down at Feylora. His gaze was cold as forged tal.
"My na is Maldrake," he said, voice spreading outward and making ripples bloom across the surface of the mine’s half-ford shield. "I’m one of the overlords of this land."
His expression hardened.
"Who are you? Why are you occupying this mine? Don’t you know this is my ground?"
The anger in Maldrake’s tone was obvious.
Silver energy rolled over his body in waves. The Primordial Force between heaven and earth responded to his mood, gathering toward him. The clouds above the mine were shoved aside, revealing a suffocating gray-white sky.
Feylora didn’t back off.
She lifted her chin higher, her aura settling into a calm, controlled steadiness.
"What do you an, your ground?"
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried across the entire mine like a blade.
"This mine is sothing we paid for with blood. We lost people taking it. If you want it back—then co trade blood for it."
Maldrake’s eyes widened.
He clearly hadn’t expected a little girl—one who had just invaded—to say it with that much righteous certainty.
The fury on his face deepened. Silver light flared along his arms, expanding outward until the air started popping with fine, brittle explosions under the pressure.
He stopped talking.
He raised his palm.
Violent energy gathered from the world around them, snapping into place above his hand. At first it condensed into a fist-sized silver orb—then it swelled fast, in only a few breaths becoming a massive sphere of silver light.
Inside it, power collapsed inward... then detonated outward.
Each collapse tightened the Primordial Force around it like a noose. Each outward surge left thin cracks sketched across space itself.
Down on the mine, soldiers who only dared glance up felt the energy inside their bodies get tugged out of alignnt by that silver glow.
Ethan’s expression turned fully serious.
That thing was lethal.
It didn’t matter who you were—if that silver sphere so much as grazed you, the compressed energy inside would grind both body and soul into ash.
He’d been planning to see how far Feylora could push Maldrake on her own, but now he was already preparing to step in. Maldrake was stronger than Ethan had expected, and if Feylora tried to et that head-on, she might not co out ahead.
But just as Ethan started to move, Feylora took a single step back.
She didn’t run.
As she retreated, she unfurled her power.
A pair of enormous wings condensed behind her.
They weren’t simple energy wings. They were built from countless golden runes, elental radiance, and Primordial Force woven together. Each "feather" was like a precision rune array—when it vibrated, it tugged at the world’s power. As the wings fully spread, streams of runes shot out from behind her and began to orbit her body.
Surprise flashed through Ethan’s eyes.
He imdiately opened the system and scanned Feylora’s status panel.
Information flooded in—dense enough to make his eyes sting.
Feylora already carried dozens of different elental powers inside her, and they weren’t just stacked together. They were being orchestrated as a single whole under the authority of the Fey Sovereign’s power. More importantly...
She had already fused this world’s Primordial Force into herself.
Ethan’s face tightened.
In a sense, Maldrake was one of this world’s overlords—soone who could command the Primordial Force between heaven and earth.
But now, Feylora could do the sa.
Which ant that, at least to a certain extent, she had also stepped into the rank of an overlord in this world.
This fight wasn’t just a clash between strong individuals anymore.
It was a war over control—two overlords fighting for the right to mobilize the world’s power.
Every trace of energy around them could be pulled and redirected. It would co down to who could seize more of it, faster, and hold it steadier.
The pressure in the air skyrocketed.
The silver sphere above Maldrake’s palm swelled outward, expanding like a collapsing star. Behind Feylora, the runic wings released waves of gold light in response. Before the two forces even touched, the sky was already webbing with cracks.
Those fissures stretched from above the mine all the way to the distant mountains, as if the world itself was being torn open by the tension between them.
If this kept going...
This entire slice of heaven and earth might shatter.
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