Chapter 1335: The Sea Had a Throne

Through that massive single eye, Ethan saw himself inside the palace.

He also saw the Level Four Cyclopes standing there with their heads lowered, and the glowing stones laid out in front of them like offerings.

The vision lasted only a split second.

When Ethan snapped back into his own body, Veyrion had already stopped struggling.

It was like it had just glimpsed something unspeakable—something that didn’t belong in this world. The huge eye stared at Ethan in raw terror, tears spilling nonstop from the corners.

"I’m sorry!"

"I’m sorry!"

"I was wrong!"

"I really was wrong!"

Ethan... sort of understood why it had changed so suddenly.

The white sphere of energy in his palm drifted to a stop in front of Veyrion instead of smashing down.

Ataneya eased up too.

The moment her fox tails loosened, Veyrion collapsed bonelessly onto the golden stone slab, barely alive, sucking in ragged breaths.

But its injuries were healing so fast it was hard to believe.

Split skin sealed itself.

Broken bone slid back into place.

And as the recovery continued, the glow beneath its body—those golden stones—dimmed little by little.

On the other side, Andona wasn’t having an easy time.

The shield raised by the Cyclops soldiers was absurdly tough.

The Emerald Castle legion had already launched a full-on frontal suppression—golden holy light, weapons, formation attacks slamming into the enemy barrier again and again—yet the results were almost nothing.

The blue-white shield only rippled faintly.

Inside it, their formation stayed intact.

Right as the standoff dragged on, a figure appeared above the battlefield.

Veyrion, still sprawled on the golden stone, lifted its head.

That dull, oversized eye locked onto its subordinates behind the shield, and the sclera slowly webbed with bloodshot streaks.

A massive surge of energy began to gather.

A blood-red laser erupted from the Cyclops’ eye, sweeping horizontally across the entire battlefield.

The beam was wide enough to swallow formations, roads, even the edge of the mining pit.

But right before it struck, a ring of white shielding bloomed around Andona and the Emerald Castle troops, sealing them inside it completely.

The bloodlight roared past both sides of the barrier.

And at the same time, the Cyclops legion’s own blue-white energy screen... vanished.

Not because Veyrion shattered it.

Because the Cyclopes dropped it themselves.

They saw their boss appear, and instinctively broke formation, eager to go迎—eager to rush forward and greet him.

The next instant, brilliant blood-red swallowed the entire army.

Countless figures didn’t even get a full scream out before they were erased inside the beam.

The golden stones beneath everyone’s feet dimmed rapidly.

And the color of Veyrion’s laser kept deepening.

Bright red.

Dark red.

Then, at last, something close to pure black.

Even the surrounding light seemed pressed down by it, and the whole mining pit sank into gloom—

except for that one beam pouring out of Veyrion’s eye.

It punched through the bottom of the mine, drilled into the strata below, and drove toward the city’s true core.

Ethan stood beside the darkening golden stone, a wave of exhaustion rising in him.

One person’s fantasy... had ended up manufacturing an entire nation.

In that fantasy, "him" sat high on a throne.

Everything centered on him.

And everyone standing around him had to be, by definition, one rank lower.

The underground core’s fluctuations were already spiraling out of control.

It was about to explode.

A spatial wormhole unfolded in front of Ethan and the others.

Nobody hesitated. One after another, they stepped through.

In the next heartbeat, Ethan was standing on that familiar coastline.

Fine, soft sand under his feet.

An endless ocean in front of him.

Waves pushed lazily toward shore. Sunlight glittered on the water. The sea breeze rolled over them, damp and clean against their skin.

Ethan stared around, blank-faced.

None of it felt real.

Wasn’t this... exactly the life he’d always wanted?

At the same time, Veyrion had reached the underground core.

A massive, blood-red heart hung in the center of a dark void.

It was still pounding with everything it had.

Each contraction forced out the last of its energy, sending it into the already-collapsing country above.

Thump.

Thump.

Veyrion’s laser speared through the layers of earth and finally struck the blood-red heart.

The beam pierced the core.

That heart—busy for an entire lifetime—stopped beating.

The nine-headed cattle on the grassland vanished in the same instant.

And as the final heartbeat fell silent, this nation built from fantasy finally met its end.

The sea wind softened at last.

Ataneya sat near the shoreline with all twenty-four enormous fox tails fanned out behind her—some soaking in the seawater, some sprawled across the sand. She’d only meant to use this rare peace to wash her tails clean, but the second she actually started, she realized it was way more annoying than fighting.

Twenty-four.

And every single one of them was ridiculously huge.

By the time the sea rinsed the first few, the ones behind had already picked up sand again. Ataneya stared at the remaining mass of fur and honestly couldn’t see a world where she finished without it being pure delusion.

Farther from shore, Elira unfurled her Divine Sovereign Moth wings and skimmed low over the water.

Beneath the clear shallows, the outlines of reefs were sharp, and in the cracks you could even see clams tucked in. Whenever a wave rolled through, the edges of their shells caught tiny glints of light, and those little sparkles kept stealing Elira’s attention.

She drifted farther and farther out.

In the shallows, Auri and Anya grabbed Idra’s feet—one on each side—making the little dragon tow them as they cut across the surface. Every so often the three of them crashed into a wave, then burst back out laughing.

Nysera had always lived in water. Out here, she loosened up completely.

She moved through the shallow sea much faster than anyone else—water splitting cleanly along both sides of her body—until, in the blink of an eye, she’d already swum far away.

The beach itself was easy.

Light.

Breathing room.

But deeper down, the light had already changed.

A palace, dazzling and lavish, sat in silence on the seafloor.

Beyond its towering doors, a dragon—so old it looked half past the end—lay before the throne. Its scales had lost most of their luster, and its body carried the heavy rot of a life nearing its last page.

It was speaking to a younger successor in front of it.

The dragon’s tone was slow and weighty, every word landing like instructions that couldn’t be forgotten.

The younger one kept its head lowered the entire time.

Only after the talk ended did it turn and leave the palace.

But the moment it crossed the threshold, the expression that had belonged to it was gone.

Its eyes lost their spark.

Its movements stiffened.

It looked like there was nothing left in its head except the order it had just received.

The palace doors closed again.

The ancient dragon before the throne raised its head, watching until the successor disappeared completely.

Then its body began to shrink.

Scales faded away. Limbs shifted shape.

In the end, it transformed into a human form and sat back on the throne with quiet satisfaction.

Up on the surface, Ethan and the others had no idea anything had changed in the deep.

They were scattered across the sand, lying around in whatever positions they’d dropped into.

After battle after battle, this kind of silence was almost unreal.

The waves rolled up with steady rhythm, then slid back out. Sometimes a crab scuttled sideways past them. Sometimes small sea creatures got tossed into the shallows by the surf.

Whenever Ethan spotted one, he’d casually pick it up and put it back in the water.

One crab even raised its claws in protest—

and he just set it down gently.

"Go on."

A wave swept in.

The crab was gone.

Far out, Elira had flown deeper without realizing it.

The water beneath her shifted from clear pale blue into darker blue.

Ahead, even the reefs and seafloor vanished from sight.

An abyssal ocean spread under her, and any light that entered it died fast. That black-blue water was too quiet—quiet enough that if she kept going, she’d start to feel like the sea itself was swallowing her whole.

And in that palace below, Thalvyr sat alone on the throne.

Not a single attendant in sight.

He leaned back, tapping one finger lightly on the armrest, while his eyes kept changing color.

Red.

Gold.

Deep blue.

With every shift, his expression changed by tiny degrees, like he was trying on different versions of himself.

"These humans... wandering into territory under my rule," he murmured to himself. "What are they here for?"

His finger stopped.

"They’ve got some bite," he said softly.

A beat of silence.

"...Is it worth taking the risk?"