Free Web NovelChapter 1157: Power Changes Masters
Ethan forced himself out of the cracked stone and reached forward with his right hand.
Ghastly white lightning, the dark ghost-blue patterns, and that blood-resonating energy surged together, compressing into a huge energy sphere in his palm.
The sphere was wildly unstable. The three forces tore at each other from the inside, fighting for dominance—yet Ethan crushed them together anyway, pinning them around a single core through sheer will.
He raised his arm and hurled it.
The sphere punched through the darkness, dragging a twisting trail of deep blue and pale-white light behind it as it smashed straight toward the ghost-blue figure. The man snapped a hand up, and the surrounding dark energy condensed into a thick, heavy shield in front of him.
The two powers collided.
This time, it didn’t get swallowed. fгeewebnovёl.com
Ethan’s sphere tore through the barrier by force and slammed into the ghost-blue figure’s shoulder.
Ghastly white lightning speared into his energy-formed body. The dark-blue markings detonated an instant later, blasting a massive gash straight through his shoulder.
Ghost-blue energy sprayed from the wound.
All the arrogance on his face vanished.
He looked down at his shattered shoulder, and for the first time, real fear flickered in his eyes.
The next second, he didn’t try to keep fighting. He spun to run, his body turning into a ghost-blue streak as he tried to sink back into the stone wall—
But after only two steps, the power around him shifted.
The darkness and ghost-blue energy that had answered him a moment ago suddenly wove together into a gigantic blue net in midair.
Strands shot out from the ground, the walls, and the depths of the darkness at the same time, snapping precisely around his wrists, ankles, throat, and waist—locking him dead center.
The ghost-blue figure froze.
His eyes went wide, the shock on his face deeper than before.
"That’s impossible."
He thrashed violently, ghost-blue light inside him hammering against the net again and again.
"I’ve been here for thousands of years! All the power here was derived from my body. How could it betray me?!"
Ethan stared at the blue net, and he didn’t have an answer either.
He could feel it—this energy was responding to him. Not total submission. Not true ownership. More like... because of that strange force resonating with his blood, part of this underground space had temporarily chosen him instead.
It felt wrong.
But he wasn’t going to waste it.
Ethan lifted both hands and pulled on every thread of power that would answer him.
The blue net cinched tight. Ghastly white lightning raced along the strands and crashed into the ghost-blue figure. At the same time, dark-blue energy surged up from the ground like a tide, slamming down on him in heavy waves.
Boom!
The ghost-blue figure was driven into the wall.
Rock collapsed inward. His body was embedded deep into the stone, limbs yanked apart by the net’s cords. Energy heaved in his chest, surging and buckling—but he couldn’t gather it cleanly anymore, couldn’t form a complete counterattack.
Ethan took a breath, adjusted his rhythm, and walked over.
With each step, the darkness peeled back to either side.
Ghastly white lightning snapped at his fingertips. Dark ghost-blue patterns flowed along the back of his hand. The ghost-blue figure stared at him with a mix of venom and terror, but he couldn’t break free from the net no matter how he strained.
Ethan stopped right in front of him and raised a finger, pressing it lightly to his forehead.
"The power leaking off you is impressive," Ethan said, voice calm.
"Which means your energy core should be impressive too."
The ghost-blue figure’s pupils tightened.
Ethan’s finger slid down, stopping over the center of his chest.
"Then hand it over."
As the words fell, Ethan drove his hand into the man’s chest.
It wasn’t flesh. It was an insanely dense structure of ghost-blue energy, layered like hardened crystal. The moment Ethan’s palm forced its way in, a mass of darkness energy surged up, trying to backlash up his arm— fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
But ghastly white lightning exploded from his fingertips and ripped the counterforce apart on contact.
The ghost-blue figure let out a tortured scream, his body convulsing violently inside the wall.
Ethan didn’t stop.
He followed the strongest pulse of energy inside the other man’s body, reaching deeper until his fingers closed around something hard. It was wrapped in dense ghost-blue power, with countless tiny, vein-like strands of energy coiling around it.
Ethan’s grip tightened. He yanked.
Crack!
He ripped an energy gemstone straight out of the thing’s chest.
The instant the gem left its body, the ghost-blue figure convulsed violently.
The giant blue net around them flared so bright it stabbed at the eyes—then dimmed just as fast. With its core gone, the figure’s power leaked away like water draining from a broken container, and it could no longer maintain a humanoid shape.
Ethan lowered his eyes to the gemstone in his hand.
The aura coming off it was brutally strong. Ghost-blue light churned inside, rotating in heavy rings that pulsed outward like waves. Even just holding it, Ethan could feel the domineering might packed into that core.
This core was far more complete than the leftover energy he’d absorbed earlier.
As the gem was taken, the ghost-blue figure withered at speed.
Its once-solid body grew thin. The skin-like energy layer split, and the light inside bled away in strands. Not long after, it crumbled into a handful of dust and slid off the stone wall.
Ethan didn’t linger in that underground darkness.
He pressed the ghost-blue gemstone into his body. Ghastly white lightning immediately wrapped around it, sealing the escaping power layer by layer.
The gem sank deep into his chest. Ghost-blue light spread outward along his flesh and meridians—then was forced back into the core position by Infernal Primordial Power, finally stabilizing into a heavy, steady energy source.
He didn’t look back.
His body turned into a streak of ghastly white lightning and shot upward through the collapsing fissure.
The darkness fell behind him.
Before long, Ethan burst out through the mountain’s裂口 and hovered in open air again. When the outside light hit him, it finally felt like he’d clawed his way free from another world.
In the distance, residual energy still rippled across the canyon. Cracks split the mountain range everywhere the fighting had torn through it, and the air was still laced with the blended aftertaste of Infernal Primordial Power, ghastly white lightning, and raw mineral-vein energy.
Ethan glanced down at the canyon, his eyes still carrying a trace of disbelief.
A canyon that looked this unremarkable... and it had been hiding that much power.
Snow-white stone. Infernal Abyss runes. Energy cores. The Titan Turtle’s blood-red world-gems. And the ghost-blue gemstone he’d just ripped out.
Any one of those things taken outside would drive ordinary factions insane.
Yet they’d all been buried under this mountain range, as if the world had deliberately hidden them for years.
Ethan had barely pulled his gaze away when a powerful wave swept across the sky not far off.
It wasn’t an enemy strike.
It was the unified energy fluctuation of Emerald Castle’s army, surging as their formations regrouped after finishing the cleanup.
Around the distant mine, the chaotic battlefield had been completely cleared. The remaining enemies were dead, escape routes sealed. Several temporary blockade arrays were spinning in the air. Fallen Star Guard held the high ground. Powered Combat Armor floated in dense clusters around the mine’s perimeter. A goblin engineering team had already started dismantling the ruins and taking over the mineral-vein equipment.
This entire region had been fully occupied by Emerald Castle.
The excitement in Ethan’s eyes surfaced again.
He didn’t waste time. He immediately ordered everyone to assemble at the mine.
The army entered in batches. The strong absorbed the energy overflowing from the veins directly, while the regular soldiers were guided by the goblin engineers into temporary energy arrays.
Power from inside the mine was drawn out through pipeline after pipeline, then fed through array patterns into the soldiers’ bodies.
Many of the fighters had been exhausted after the battle, but under the nourishment of this energy, their auras quickly recovered—and on quite a few of them, their Tier fluctuations began to climb.
