CHAPTER 378: ETHAN’S COUNTERATTACK (2)

Third Person’s POV

And in that sliver of a heartbeat, that narrow fracture of focus, Ethan moved as that was the opening all he needed.

His bloodied hands grasped the luminous fruit, and the prize glowed with a vitality that pulsed red like a beating heart in his hand.

And the moment his fingers closed around it, waves of rich multi colored elemental essence surged into him.

As he felt the energy coursing through his veins, it was like drinking fire and ice at once.

It was a storm of calm yet violent power flooding his veins. Soon, his chest swelled, and his breath hitched, as a surreal, exhilarating tide overwhelmed him.

For the first time, he felt it clearly, the lock and that invisible shackle within his being, the restriction that had weighed upon him for the past five years.

That invisible restriction started trembling, cracking, and in that instant of clarity, he realized what it was.

It was the boundary of the Crystal Formation Realm, stage three of the path of the divine ascension.

His inner world erupted, and his still magic dimension, the dark and silent ocean, started boiling and writhing with tumultuous waves.

Soon, a colossal whirlpool started churning at its center and dragged enormous currents into a vortex of abyssal depth.

In the next moment, he had a sudden feeling as if something ancient and something vast was straining to break free from the darkness below.

Yet Ethan clenched his teeth and restrained himself as this was neither the place nor the time for it.

The instinctive temptation to ascend from his current state of being hissed at his soul and urged him to devour the fruit and dive deeper, but survival and the fact that his breakthrough might be imperfect and even fail in a disastrous manner demanded his caution.

With one last glance at the remaining fruits, his gray dimensional ring pulsed faintly, and the five glowing fruits vanished into its depths.

His body trembled as the adrenaline rush finally died out now that he had obtained his goal, and so he finally noticed the lacerations crisscrossing his skin.

He noticed the blood soaking his frame and dripping down in rivulets, yet he stood firm.

He knew that despite the pain and despite the wounds, they were not fatal as the dust storm had failed to pierce his true defenses and beneath the shredded fabric and bloodied skin, his body gleamed faintly with the crystalline chill of his armor.

His icy shell armor, which was forged by the Arctic Sovereign Immortal Body Technique, remained unbroken as his years of brutal training in the frozen wastelands had carved his flesh into a fortress.

His flesh and blood were honed in suffering and tempered in storms, and now, that fortress stood unyielding, but what surprised him was that both the sharp claw attack, those needles, and that level of dust storm indicated that his opponents were similarly in the Elemental Sea realm.

But he soon concluded that they might be in their twenties or late teens, but still, if he went by normal estimates, they were monstrously talented geniuses to have become a real mage at such a young age.

Though he didn’t consider himself as he was an exception, and exceptions were not meant to be compared with the normal populace.

At most, they were shallow lacerations and nothing truly life-threatening.

Even as the thought passed through his mind, the wounds were already beginning to close, and thin cracks of crystalline blue ice formed over each one like frost sealing over broken glass.

The frigid aura of his Arctic Sovereign Immortal Body technique worked ceaselessly, and knitted the flesh and shielded him in cold purity.

To Ethan, it felt as though minutes had passed in contemplation, yet in the outside world, not even a few seconds had slipped by.

Ethan’s cold and mellow warning sounded like an echo in the clearing, and hearing the fatal warning in them, the blond demon’s face paled in fury and fear for his mate’s life.

The blond demon’s yellow eyes burned with fury, and his voice broke into a ragged, hoarse shout as he glared up at the figure on the crown of the tree, the young man standing above them, and toyed with a dark, frost-bitten blade in his hand.

"Cure my sister... or else—!"

Ethan was surprised to know that she was his sister, but his reply cut through the air in a low and unhurried voice, his tone flat and devoid of sympathy, like a winter wind that froze bones.

"Or else what? What can you possibly do to me? Your ambush failed, and you didn’t even manage to scratch my core defenses."

He tilted the blade in his hand slightly and let the sinister blue-black gleam catch the sunlight.

"But, it’s not like we intended to kill you. Why are you still so—"

The blond demon said in anger and hatred, but Ethan interrupted him in the middle, and a cold sneer appeared on his face at the blatant hypocrisy this guy was showing.

"Allow me to give you some advice, my friend. Leave now and disappear from my sight, and if you linger here, the same fate will await you. I swear it. And one last thing..."

His crimson eyes glimmered faintly, like embers buried beneath ash, and his face was carved into a mask of cold indifference.

"Remember this, you are fortunate that this is merely a trial."

The blond demon’s jaw tightened, and he wanted to curse, to roar, and to spit venom at the man who had humiliated him, but the weight of Ethan’s gaze crushed the words in his throat.

There was no fire and no emotion there, but only a void that reflected back his fear.

His chest constricted, and for the first time, he realized the truth that this wasn’t an opponent that he had underestimated, but a predator.

He shuddered and then, with a swirl of dust and a final hateful glare, he vanished into the distance, while dragging his unconscious sister with him.