Chapter 51: Capturing a rank 5 martial artist

The moment Seraphina’s boots touched the jagged stone, a complex, intricate geometric rune formation flashed beneath her feet in a brilliant, dazzling burst of glacial-blue light.

Radiating outward in an instant, a freezing shockwave swept across the endless expanse of the ocean. Within seconds, the rolling saltwater turned to solid ice, forming a thick, shimmering crystal layer stretching as far as the eye could see. Seraphina stepped off the rock, walking effortlessly across the newly forged ice sheet toward the stranded beast-girl.

The cat-eared girl initially flinched in terror, realizing the spell bore the hallmarks of a lethal third-rank incantation, while she herself was only a second-rank Beast Tamer. However, recovering her composure, she willed her combat aura to drop, nullifying her partial beast transformation.

With a soft shimmer of light, her hybrid features vanished, reverting her into an ordinary-looking human girl with short black hair, wearing practical dark leather travel gear. Her companion creature simultaneously shifted, transforming into a small, domestic black cat with striking heterochromia—one eye glowing a brilliant amber, the other an intense sapphire.

"Hi there!" the girl offered nervously, flashing a friendly, disarming smile. "How long have you been out here? I only dropped into this ocean about ten minutes before you appeared."

Seraphina paused, a thoughtful gleam crossing her green eyes. *Ten minutes before me?*

Though she had only hesitated a couple of minutes before plunging through the realm’s portal, the time distortion here was clearly erratic compared to the outside world.

Surveying the endless horizon of frozen water, Seraphina turned to the stranger. "Come with me."

The girl nodded eagerly, scooping the black cat into her arms and following closely behind. As Seraphina walked, every step she took caused the ice beneath her to pulse with freezing light.

The cat-eared girl stared in absolute astonishment.

In this world, a person’s hair and eye color usually correlated directly with their elemental affinity—such as golden hair for light or solar magic. Yet Seraphina possessed striking crimson hair while wielding terrifying, absolute ice magic.

Glancing down at the cat in her arms, the girl muttered nervously via telepathy, *"Meow, stay quiet and don’t piss her off. She looks dangerous..."*

The black cat blinked its mismatched eyes and let out a tiny, understanding chirp.

Meanwhile, Seraphina’s emerald eyes flickered with tricolor spiritual symbols as she reactivated her appraisal art—the **Soul Resonance Insight Technique**—to scan the surrounding ether.

Within moments, her mental map expanded. She sensed that the secret realm was geographically fractured into distinct elemental zones: a dense primeval jungle to the west, a floating sky-archipelago to the north, an arid desert to the east, and this sprawling frozen ocean below.

*The realm is divided into distinct sectors,* she deduced quietly. *Ethan has a fire affinity, so he likely ended up in the desert zone. That means I am completely free to use my true power without interference.*

A cold, ambitious smirk touched her lips. *Let the others fight over the surface treasures. Everything hidden within this massive two-thousand-kilometer dead ocean belongs to me.*

Extending her spiritual perception deep beneath the frozen waves across the sprawling marine expanse, her scan reached down nearly two hundred kilometers until she detected a massive, hollowed-out subterranean abyss carved into the ocean floor. Deep within its shadows, a colossal, shifting presence lurked.

"Stay here," Seraphina instructed flatly to the black-haired girl. Without waiting for a reply, she encased herself in an impenetrable sphere of blue defensive ice and plunged straight down toward the oceanic trench.

***

Far away in the arid, scorching expanse of the desert zone, Ethan stood deep within a subterranean labyrinth of sun-baked sandstone catacombs. Ancient, weathered hieroglyphs and cryptic warning runes were etched into the brownish-yellow stone walls around him.

Like Seraphina, Ethan had already mapped the layout of the four-part realm in his mind: the western jungle, the northern floating islands, the southern frozen ocean, and these ancient, trap-ridden catacombs.

*Click.*

His boot brushed against a hidden pressure plate, instantly triggering a vicious trap.

From the stone ceiling above, a torrential downpour of poisoned iron-tipped darts rained down.

Before they could strike, a dense, shimmering barrier of dark ether materialized around Ethan, neutralizing the kinetic impact. The darts slammed against the shield, instantly corroding and evaporating into gray ash.

Ethan continued walking at a leisurely pace. Over the next few minutes, a barrage of traps tried to claim his life—spitting streams of dragon-fire, venomous sand-vipers lunging from floor cracks, raging minotaur golems bursting from the walls, and towering magic circles of spiked stone closing in to crush him.

He simply crushed, shattered, or ignored every single obstacle in his path without breaking a sweat.

At the end of the labyrinth lay a massive, sealed stone vault housing a towering burial sarcophagus.

As Ethan stepped into the chamber, the heavy stone lid of the coffin began to grind open with an ominous groan. A terrifying figure clawed its way out—an ancient ascetic master whose skin was completely devoid of color, clad in tattered dark robes that radiated the oppressive, suffocating pressure of a **Peak Rank 5 Martial Artist**.

Ethan’s lips curved into an amused smile.

With a flick of his wrist, a dark, complex geometric magic circle bloomed beneath the undead master’s feet, causing him to panic and forcefully release a massive wave of dark aura that shattered the catacomb’s stone ceiling above.

Rising from the dust came a towering, fifty-meter-tall **Demonic Martial Soul**—a legendary manifestation forged from a master’s awakened martial class.

The colossal entity possessed pitch-black skin, glowing demonic eyes, two sharp protruding tusks, a massive war-trident in one hand, and a blooming necrotic lotus in the other.

Roaring with fury, the undead Grand Master lunged forward at lightning-fast speed, thrusting his heavy trident straight at Ethan’s chest with blinding white light.

Ethan didn’t blink. Reaching into his spatial ring, he drew the **Light-Swallowing Rusted Sword**—embedded with a drop of Sun God blood. Channeling his surging spiritual mana into the blade, it ignited with majestic golden radiance.

With a sweeping, upward motion, Ethan unleashed a vertical golden arc of pure solar light that slammed into the trident’s tip, triggering a massive shockwave that forced the old master backward.

Before the ascetic could recover, he hurled his massive necrotic lotus, its petals morphing into razor-sharp projectiles of dark pink energy. Utilizing his Blue Dragon Heart’s spatial resonance, Ethan flickered away in a blur of blue light, instantly materializing directly in front of the master.

The old master threw a devastating, dark-energy-infused palm strike straight at Ethan’s face, but as the dark energy surged to surround him, it suddenly dissipated into thin air.

The old master froze, paralyzed. He had completely forgotten the dormant servitude formation Ethan had quietly anchored into the cavern floor from the beginning.

Using the forbidden necromantic art known as the **Soul-Eater Corpse Binding Curse**, Ethan locked his gaze onto the immobilized Grand Master.

A dark, victorious smile spread across his face as the glowing light of absolute submission settled into the undead master’s eyes.

"Magnificent," Ethan murmured softly. "Now I have a early Rank 5 Martial Artist as my personal slave. Let’s see what other treasures are waiting for us deeper inside this tomb."

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