Chapter 178: Seized Glory

"Hmm, it’s dead."

Turning slowly to face behind him, Ethen sighed softly at the sight of the mangled, unrecognizable clump of reptilian flesh violently plastered against the stone pavement.

Grag had secretly deployed his prized S-Rank summon to execute a lethal sneak attack directly on Ethen’s blind spot. In retrospect, the tactical concept had been sound.

Ethen had been completely focused on Arthur dismantling the frontline.

Unfortunately for Grag, he hadn’t accounted for Ethen coincidentally opening his spiritual gate to summon his towering titan, Gilgamesh, at that exact second.

"Good work, big guy," Ethen said with a faint, appreciative smile, glancing up at the blunt, colossal face of Gilgamesh’s warhammer, which was now dripping with thick black ichor.

Then, his gaze shifted back to Grag.

The Ascendant brawler stood completely frozen in place, his wide eyes trembling with sheer, unadulterated horror as he stared at the crushed remains of his beast.

Summons could endure horrific, disfiguring trauma in battle and return perfectly intact once dismissed and called forth again.

True death, however, severed the soul tether entirely. Calling an entity back from total destruction demanded astronomical resources, rare soul-forging elixirs, and months of grueling spiritual rehabilitation.

"You absolute fucker!!!"

Grag’s eyes immediately flushed bloodshot, the fine vessels rupturing under the surge of hysterical fury.

His knuckles turned white as his fingers clamped around the fractured haft of his two-faced axe, raw disbelief and blinding rage contorting his rugged features into a hideous sneer.

This time, Ethen didn’t issue an order to his summons.

Neither Arthur nor Gilgamesh stepped forward to shield him. Instead, Ethen took a calm, measured step forward and smoothly dropped into the low, balanced stance of the Judgment Style.

His center of gravity lowered, his spine aligning like a coiled steel spring.

His grip tightened firmly around the dark hilt of his sheathed blade, his thumb popping the guard forward with a crisp, metallic click.

His cold, focused eyes remained locked on the charging warrior.

Watching Grag sprint across the fractured stone, Ethen could see the maddening grief and fury clouding the man’s judgment. Clearly, the sudden loss of an S-Rank summon had shattered this so-called genius’s mental composure.

"Die!"

Grag roared from the depths of his lungs, leaping into the air to bring his cracked axe down with the entirety of his remaining weight and fury.

Ethen remained completely motionless.

He read the trajectory of the descending steel. He measured the velocity of the air currents, calculating the exact millisecond Grag’s momentum passed the point of no return.

Then, with one clean, blinding sweep, his blade carved through the air.

Slash!

The razor-sharp edge bit deep into Grag’s exposed flank, shearing through reinforced leather and meat with sickening ease.

The strike cut deep enough to sever major muscle groups and fracture lower ribs, ensuring it would be agonizingly difficult for the brute to retaliate even if his spirit remained willing.

Yet Grag, driven mad by adrenaline and the agony of losing his beast, had thrown his torso violently sideways at the last second, narrowly avoiding having his spine bifurcated.

A thick arc of crimson blood splattered heavily across the broken cobblestones.

Ethen smoothly reversed his grip, drawing the red-stained steel back into a loose, resting guard as his gaze swept across the surrounding courtyard.

"This is entirely pointless," Ethen said, his voice flat and clinical.

He gestured with the tip of his weapon toward the perimeter. "Look around you. We’ve already taken this citadel."

Grag froze, his chest heaving violently as dark red foam bubbled between his clenched teeth.

Only then did the Ascendant brawler finally force himself to look at the wider battlefield.

While the two of them had been locked in their clash, the strategic reality of the Thousand Beast Citadel had shifted completely.

The thirty veteran soldiers of the West Wall Brigade had thoroughly crushed the garrison troops defending the outer ramparts, maintaining an unbroken, lethal phalanx that pushed through every defensive line.

Meng had provided devastating aerial suppression from the high ground, his *Air Nomad* techniques firing explosive rounds into enemy clusters, while Hela and Ella had swept through the inner courtyards like twin reapers.

The two women had made terrifyingly short work of the remaining defensive squads, disarming officers and scattering the reserve formations with ruthless coordination.

The Ascendant faction had suffered a total, absolute defeat.

Grag had simply been too blinded by his obsessive desire to butcher Ethen to notice his stronghold collapsing around his ears.

"Do you honestly think I give a damn?!" Grag’s expression twisted into something feral, his bloody fingers clawing at the haft of his weapon.

"I’ll drag your corpse into the dirt with me even if it costs my very—"

Just as Grag prepared to throw himself into another suicidal charge, a gloved hand reached out from the gloom and clamped firmly onto his wounded shoulder.

"They’ve won."

The voice was remarkably calm, carrying the smooth, chilling cadence of a high-tier sovereign.

"We need to leave."

A slender man clad in sweeping black robes, with intricate silver binding chains wound tightly around both wrists, materialized out of thin air beside the bleeding brawler.

A Demi-god.

"He killed Berta!" Grag cried out, his voice cracking with the desperate indignation of a disgraced champion.

Skirmishes like this were a recognized custom during the administrative exchange of disputed citadels—a controlled environment where factions tested each other’s young talents without crossing into permanent, unpardonable blood feuds.

Ordinarily, no participant went out of their way to permanently obliterate an opponent’s contracted summon.

It was treated as an unwritten, gentlemanly boundary between factions. But Ethen had thoroughly eradicated an S-Rank beast without a second thought.

"It is an active battlefield," the Demi-god replied coldly, his impassive eyes never once wavering as he stared down at Grag. "Anything can happen when weapons are drawn."

He showed not the slightest hint of outrage on Grag’s behalf.

"You should have exhibited far more caution before deploying a covert strike," the sovereign stated, his tone brooking no argument. "Now stand up. We are departing."

Without offering Grag another second to complain, the cloaked man turned and casually raised two fingers, projecting a high-frequency spiritual chime across the fortress grounds.

At the signal, the battered survivors of the Ascendant faction began picking themselves up from the blood-soaked stone.

Some were limping heavily from severe lacerations, others were clutching broken arms or carrying shattered gear, and many muttered bitter curses under their breath.

Yet beneath their resentment lay the grim acceptance of seasoned mercenaries.

They had been thoroughly outfought, outmaneuvered, and broken.

Maintaining strict military discipline despite their humiliation, the defeated garrison filed toward the lower flight decks where several Ascendant battleships had quietly docked along the outer trench.

Ethen stood with his sword resting loosely at his side, calmly watching the evacuation proceed.

As the Demi-god turned to board the final transport vessel, Ethen’s voice suddenly cut through the hum of the warming engines.

"Hey."

The cloaked man paused at the foot of the boarding ramp, turning his head slightly.

"Are you Eren? The Blazing Star?"

The Demi-god turned fully around, genuine surprise rippling across his otherwise impassive features as he processed the inquiry.

"Eren?"

The man looked Ethen up and down, as if measuring whether the young summoner was insane. "He is not stationed at a remote outpost like this."

Eren was the undisputed youth sovereign of the Ascendant faction—a terrifying anomaly who stood upon the absolute threshold of ascending to authentic Angelhood.

Throughout the entire Bastion, he was revered as one of the most frightening generational talents mankind had produced in the last two centuries.

Why would a newly admitted recruit be asking about a monster like that? Did Ethen genuinely believe his five summons were enough to challenge the Blazing Star?

A subtle, confident smile touched the corner of Ethen’s mouth.

"Tell him I’m looking for him," Ethen said smoothly.

Without waiting for a reaction, Ethen reached into his inner robe and tossed the official administrative transfer parchment across the space between them.

The Demi-god caught the document effortlessly, his single visible eye lingering on Ethen for several long seconds before he pulled a stylus and inscribed his spiritual signature onto the runic seal.

"I will deliver your message," the man murmured, his voice laced with dark amusement.

He tossed the signed parchment back to Ethen, turned on his heel, and strode into the vessel as the pressurized airlocks hissed shut.

Seconds later, the massive engines roared to life, casting bright plumes of blue exhaust across the terrace as the fleet pulled away and vanished into the swirling violet mists of the Nether Realm.

Ethen watched their silhouettes disappear over the distant crags.

Once the sky was clear, he turned back to face the courtyard, his blade sliding back into its scabbard with a crisp, definitive click.

"Restore the communications array," Ethen commanded, his clear voice echoing off the stone ramparts and rolling across the entire fortress.

"This citadel is officially ours."

The thirty elite soldiers of the West Wall Brigade instantly snapped their heels together, their armor clattering in crisp, reverent synchronization.

The decree was simple.

Yet it held the absolute weight of conquest.

The Dawn faction had successfully seized the contested Thousand Beast Citadel ahead of schedule, shattering the Ascendant faction’s stubborn resistance.

And Ethen Algar was the undisputed commander standing firmly at the center of the triumph.