The figure rose from the bottom of the crater, enveloped in jade-green light.
The light was so intense that it obscured the figure's features, leaving only a vague humanoid silhouette visible.
He stood over five meters tall with a lanky build, his limb proportions similar to those of the Amons.
Tiny specks of green light constantly drifted from the edges of the light pillar, dissipating rapidly into the air.
A terrifying aura radiated from the pillar.
It was completely different from any Amons aura Ethan had encountered before.
It was chaotic, twisted, and carried a near-manic hunger.
It was devouring.
It devoured the energy within the light pillar, the flesh and blood sucked in by the roots, and everything else in its vicinity.
Ethan's pupils shrank abruptly.
The figure within the light pillar slowly raised its head.
Two beams of jade-green light shot from its eye sockets, piercing through the pillar to land on Ethan at the edge of the crater.
That gaze held no anger or killing intent; it was filled only with a pure, primal hunger.
It was the look of a thousand-year-starved beast staring at a steaming hot piece of meat.
Ethan turned and bolted.
What?
Being a coward?
Look, if that thing looked at you and you didn't collapse on the spot, you've got a hell of a mind.
The mud beneath his feet exploded under the force of his legs, every step leaving a crater half a meter deep.
Trees, vines, and fallen corpses blurred past him as the wind pressure shrieked against his eardrums.
He was running faster than he ever had since stepping onto this battlefield.
As Ethan made his move, the light pillar behind him began to expand.
The light suddenly surged outward, devouring everything in its path—soil, rocks, corpses, and scattered weapons.
Ethan hadn't even covered a hundred meters before the edge of the expanding light caught up to his back.
The moment the light touched him, his protective Wood Armor was shredded like paper. His skin, muscle, and bone were stripped away layer by layer in the jade-green glow.
Ethan didn't even have time to resist.
His consciousness plunged into darkness the instant his body was completely consumed.
【You have died. Consuming 1 year of longevity. Perfect Resurrection.】
The darkness lasted only a moment.
Ethan snapped his eyes open and found himself standing on a patch of grayish-white dead earth.
The light pillar was no longer a pillar; it had expanded into a circular light screen spanning tens of thousands of meters.
The light screen pushed outward at an incredible speed. Whether it was the Amons retreating soldiers or the Wizard World's cannon fodder legions, anyone touched by it had their life force drained instantly.
Skin collapsed, muscles withered, and bones disintegrated. Every living thing was reduced to grayish-white powder in a single breath.
The trees and vines on the ground, already broken by the fires of war, had their vitality sucked dry, leaving behind nothing but rotted wood.
The light screen's expansion halted abruptly upon reaching a certain limit, then began to recede inward with equally staggering speed.
Before Ethan could react, the edge of the receding light screen swept over him once more.
His life force was stripped away again, and his consciousness plunged back into darkness amidst a violent tearing sensation.
【You have died. Consuming 1 year of longevity. Perfect Resurrection.】
Crawling back up from the dead earth, Ethan cursed under his breath as he sprinted toward the War Fortress without looking back.
"I have a few choice words I’d like to say right now."
Meanwhile, a sharp alarm echoed through the War Fortress command center.
On the giant battlefield map across the ceiling, a blinding energy source marker was flashing frantically.
On the screens before Wizard Thousand Eyes, data cascaded like a waterfall. White-robed wizards throughout the hall were working their consoles at high speed, attempting to analyze this sudden, terrifying energy source.
"Energy level determination complete. It far exceeds the full output of a Third-Tier lifeform, but it is still short of a Fourth-Tier lifeform."
"Analyzing external energy source. Matching energy signatures... Match complete. Source determination: Amons World Origin."
Wizard Thousand Eyes frowned slightly.
World origin was the final trump card of a World Consciousness.
Consuming origin meant the Amons World was desperate; it meant the World Consciousness was pouring energy into that thing at any cost.
"Bring up the target image."
The real-time battlefield footage was enlarged on the ceiling's light screen.
The light pillar had stopped expanding and was now maintaining a relatively stable form.
Inside the pillar, the five-meter-tall lanky figure floated in mid-air, its limbs hanging naturally and its head slightly bowed.
Jade-green light flowed across its body, each pulse sending visible ripples of energy through the air.
High Priest Orion.
Or rather, the thing that used to be Orion.
Wizard Thousand Eyes glanced at the screen. "Status of the main cannon?"
A young white-robed wizard at the console looked up immediately. "Lord Thousand Eyes, the main cannon is fully charged and ready to fire."
"Keep the coordinates. Maximum power. Fire."
The top of the unassuming tower on the War Fortress split open once again.
The condensation speed and scale this time far surpassed the previous shot.
In just one breath, the light expanded from the size of a fist to dozens of meters in diameter.
By the second breath, it grew to hundreds of meters.
By the third breath, the light compressed and expanded nine times, becoming more blinding, more solid, and closer to the edge of materialization with each pulse.
Upon the ninth expansion, the light condensed into a giant Emerald-Green Eye.
The eye stood over thirty meters tall with a jade-green vertical pupil, and countless complex runic patterns rotated slowly deep within it.
A pale gold luster flowed across the surface of the eyeball, and every movement left distorted trails of light in the air.
The space around the eye quivered violently as fine spatial fragments constantly drifted from its edges, only to be sucked back in.
BOOM!
The resulting beam was an entire size thicker than the last, and its intensity was more than doubled.
Wherever the beam passed, the air was instantly vaporized and space itself trembled. Fine spatial fragments constantly drifted from the edges of the beam.
Those fragments annihilated as soon as they left the beam, leaving behind long-lasting black cracks in the air.
The beam crossed half the battlefield, striking the pillar of light with pinpoint accuracy.
BOOM!!!!!
The light of the explosion pierced through the entire world.
The moment the two energies collided, the air within a ten-thousand-meter radius was instantly sucked away.
A massive mushroom cloud rose from the center of the explosion, its top reaching tens of thousands of meters into the sky, staining the heavens in an eerie intertwining of emerald and jade-green.
Countless electric arcs crackled within the cloud, and every flash left behind long-lasting scorch marks on its surface.
Rate on N.U.
