Chapter 1437: Cleanup by Annihilation

Everyone’s eyes lit up.

Seraphine remained silent for a moment, then finally nodded.

The energy sphere hovered in the center of the group.

One power after another poured into it. The sphere swelled larger as its colors grew increasingly complex. Destruction, death, fire, and banishment were compressed into the same space, each power straining to break free while the others held it in check.

Heat radiated from its surface.

For the first time, the dark blue mud retreated on its own, no longer daring to approach.

The group finally emerged from behind their shields.

They flew high into the air, clearing the blast radius as they prepared to trigger the explosion.

Kaelira raised one hand.

"Time to witness a miracle!"

A small violet-red energy sphere formed in her palm.

"Power Surge!"

She gently tossed it downward.

The two spheres touched at ground level.

The different powers inside the massive sphere began to quake. Rings of ripples spread across its surface.

Everyone waited.

Nothing happened.

Kaelira edged closer, intending to add more power.

But Seraphine sensed that the energy inside had already fallen completely out of balance. She thrust out both hands, seized everyone who had moved closer, and dragged them farther into the sky.

The energy sphere erupted.

A violent pillar of light shot upward.

A mushroom cloud expanded across the entire continent within sight. The main blast burned crimson, its flames consuming everything they touched, while points of white light and layers of gray energy churned within it.

The shock wave swept outward from the center.

Caught between the heat, death, and banishment forces, the dark blue mud was ripped completely from the surface.

The entire landmass sank more than a dozen feet.

The forest was uprooted. Trunks and branches burned to black ash, and the dead trees fell across the shattered earth, leaving behind their last nutrients for whatever life might someday grow there again.

The blast didn’t spare Ethan’s tendril cage.

The first shock wave hit just as Ethan re-formed from his black particles, smashing him into the tendril wall.

The second wave followed immediately, hurling both Ethan and the entire wall out of the cage. He punched through the barrier ahead, leaving a perfect human-shaped hole before being launched into the air.

The dark blue tendrils lost their shape under the force of the main explosion.

The four pillars fared no better. As they fell, they froze solid, then melted beneath the intense flames, leaving behind nothing but scraps of differently colored energy.

High above, Malverin stared in stunned silence.

The fading blast winds tossed him from side to side. There was nothing left around him.

The forest was gone.

The blue mud was gone.

The church and village had been swallowed by the blast as well.

Only his scepter remained at his side.

Everything he had devoted his life to was gone.

"You..."

Malverin began to tremble.

"You bastards!"

His voice rose higher and higher until it broke into an uncontrolled roar.

"Why did you destroy everything I had?!"

He hurled his scepter toward the center of the explosion, then spread both hands and created a pillar unlike the previous four.

Ethan had already returned to the group.

He looked over the barren plain, then toward the blast’s core, where violent power still raged.

"This is how you clean things up?"

Aside from the enormous sphere still releasing energy, not a single intact landmark remained.

Meanwhile, a madman thrashed in the energy turbulence, locked in a desperate struggle with the remnants of the explosion.

Another blast of air surged into the sky.

A dark blue wormhole opened overhead.

Malverin positioned himself directly beneath it. His scepter was in ruins, its shaft covered in cracks. The bird-beaked mask hid his face, but fresh tear tracks were visible along its edges.

"Every last one of you can die!"

A massive shadow appeared deep inside the wormhole.

An enormous pillar slowly descended from within.

It was dark blue, more like a square column so long that its end couldn’t be seen. Multicolored stones were embedded along every edge, and any one of them would have dwarfed most boulders the group had ever encountered.

The moment the pillar emerged from the wormhole, gravity tore the colored stones loose from its edges.

Only when the first stone neared the ground did everyone grasp its true size.

Even the pebbles embedded in the pillar’s surface were enormous.

The scale of the dark blue pillar itself was almost impossible to measure.

Malverin pressed both hands downward.

Sharp cracks rang from the damaged scepter as fractures spread through its entire shaft. His body couldn’t withstand the power either. Fine wounds began opening across his skin beneath his church robes.

Ethan couldn’t understand why Malverin was willing to go this far.

But one thought hit him with absolute certainty.

He had to stop this.

A white energy sphere shot from his palm and flew straight at Malverin. At the same time, the wings behind Ethan swept down, propelling him through the chaotic air until he reached the defenseless Malverin.

Tears streamed down Malverin’s face.

The bird-beaked mask concealed his expression, but the grief radiating from his body was unmistakable.

Ethan had no time to dwell on it.

He crossed his arms to knock the scepter aside, twisted, and drove a kick into Malverin’s waist.

Malverin lost his balance.

Ethan followed with a punch that sent him plummeting toward the ground.

Boom!

Malverin crashed into the broken earth, throwing up a ring of dust.

With his power no longer sustaining it, the dark blue pillar overhead began flickering in and out, its outline turning unstable.

But the multicolored stones that had already broken loose didn’t disappear.

Gravity continued pulling them down. They accelerated toward Ethan, faster and faster.

Ethan didn’t spare Malverin another glance.

The multicolored stones were already falling, each one unbelievably huge. Their edges tore through the air as they accelerated, trailing streaks of scorching heat.

A white shield rose around Ethan.

He lifted both fists in front of him, his eyes tracking every stone’s trajectory.

The distance rapidly closed.

The leading stones blotted out most of the sky.

The air beneath Ethan’s feet exploded.

"This strike—"

He shot upward.

"Pierces the Galaxy!"

By the time the words left his mouth, Ethan had already passed through the entire field of stones.

Each boulder he passed was left with an afterimage frozen against its surface. Every afterimage held the same pose, one fist pressed against the center of the stone.

Ethan emerged beneath the falling mass and unleashed a rapid series of punches.

Bursts of force erupted from every position marked by an afterimage.

Cracks appeared across all the multicolored stones at once.

A continuous series of snaps echoed through the sky as the massive boulders shattered from within, breaking into countless smaller fragments. The rubble continued falling, now covering an even wider area.

Ethan raised one hand.

A white energy sphere gathered in his palm, then flew into the sky.

The sphere entered the center of the debris and released its power in every direction. Every fragment touched by the white light vanished without leaving a trace.

The sky stood empty once more.

With the threat gone, Ethan descended to the ground and walked to the edge of the crater Malverin had created.

A few pebbles lay scattered around the rim.

Ethan bent down, picked one up, and casually tossed it into the pit.

"You dead?"