Chapter 38: Chapter 37: Intervention
Ethan’s smile stayed small and cold as the system finished dumping every free point into Agility.
The world slowed. It was a weird feeling, something he didn’t know he could feel.
The cinematic slowdown of legends in movies, just like that. Just clean, precise clarity.
Dust motes hung longer. The faint crackle of residual lightning on his knuckles stretched into long white threads.
Angelia’s next step, the one that should have closed the distance in a blink, looked almost leisurely.
"Uncle?" she muttered. "Yeah, die first, you dead bit."
Hermes’s daughter.
Ethan moved first.
He did not explode into motion like her. He simply ceased to be where he had been standing. One heartbeat he was in front of the small beast, the next he was three meters to Angelia’s left, lightning already gathering along his forearm in a tight, controlled spiral.
She reacted faster than any normal demigod should have.
Her fist snapped around, yellow force blooming. The punch that had put him into the rock earlier came again.
"Huh...?" She questioned as Ethan was no longer there.
He reappeared behind her, drove a short bolt into the back of her knee, and stepped away before the electricity finished traveling. Angelia’s leg buckled.
She turned the stumble into a spin, spear materializing in her hand mid-rotation, the tip already glowing.
"How...?" she said. "This shouldn’t be possible."
Ethan did not answer. He was already calculating. It wasn’t just his legs that moved fast now, but his everything.
Even though the Storm Sense was offline and his Ember nearly dry, the only thing left was the new Agility and the residual lightning still listening to him. He could not tank another full hit. He could not outlast her divine reserves. So he had to end it before the twelve heartbeats scattered around the ridge recovered enough to rejoin the fight.
The small creature, which called itself the God’s Wrath, if that was truly its name, watched from the small tunnel mouth, storm-gray eyes wide. Seris still lay where he had dragged her, pulse weak but steady.
"What did you do, Ethan?" she asked, seeing his body move so much faster, so much so that he was able to dodge her fist clean.
"Did you just sell your soul and ask for Hermes’s legs?"
Angelia came again, faster this time. Yellow force wrapped her entire body. She no longer bothered with weapons. Every step cracked the stone. Every punch carried enough divinity to pulp an ordinary officer.
Ethan met the first strike with pure evasion, letting the fist pass close enough that the shockwave tore the edge of his uniform.
He answered with a palm strike to her ribs that carried barely any lightning, just the kinetic force of a body now faster than most projectiles.
The impact made her grit her teeth.
Good.
He kept moving. Not just in a straight line. Never in a predictable way. His lightning flickered in short, vicious bursts, never a full bolt, just enough to force her to adjust, enough to keep her from locking onto a pattern.
He had low reserves, so every burst counted. And his body, his bones, he was starting to feel it—the side effects of using such extreme speed.
Angelia laughed once, sharp and delighted.
"Are you sure? If you are my brother rather than my uncle? Father will be so disappointed when I bring him a son’s corpse."
Ethan knew he needed to end this quickly. Much, much quickly.
"Haha...Tell him his dear little brother says hello," Ethan replied, and for the first time put real power into a strike.
He appeared directly in front of her, both hands already crackling. Like he was going to explode before her.
"You still have enough ember?" she asked in surprise. "Or...is this divinity?"
The lightning did not explode outward. It focused, thin as a needle, and drove straight into the center of her chest where the yellow divinity was densest.
Angelia’s eyes widened.
The force of the blow still threw her backward ten meters. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up bleeding from the mouth, but the yellow light around her only grew brighter.
[Warning: Target divinity increasing]
Of course it was.
Ethan felt the last of his usable lightning gutter. The high Agility was still there, but without power behind it he was just a very fast man with a target on his back.
Angelia wiped the blood from her lip and smiled properly for the first time.
"I was worried for nothing...you still can’t use your own divinity, can you?"
She vanished.
Ethan’s new speed let him track the blur. Barely. He twisted, took the kick on the forearm instead of the temple, and still felt bone creak.
The follow-up elbow caught him in the side. Ribs protested. He answered with a short-range bolt that forced her to lean back, buying half a second.
Half a second was enough to put distance between them again.
The small creature at the tunnel mouth made a soft, worried sound. Angelia seemed to hear it. Her eyes flicked that direction for the first time with real intent.
"Ah. There it is. The liability."
She raised one hand. Yellow force gathered into a dense spear of pure divinity aimed not at Ethan, but at the small tunnel.
Ethan moved without thinking.
He crossed the distance faster than he had ever moved in his life, body between the spear and the creature. The divine projectile slammed into his chest.
DOOM!
The world went white.
Pain arrived a fraction later, deep, crushing, the type that said something important had broken. Ethan hit the ground hard, sliding across stone.
The system screamed warnings he could not read, like telling him something was broken.
Angelia walked forward slowly, spear reforming in her hand.
"Brave and stupid. Exactly what Father said you would be."
Ethan tried to stand but his legs refused. Lightning flickered weakly across his fingers and died.
The small creature crawled out of the shadows and pressed itself against his side, tiny webbed hands gripping his uniform.
"Fa...ther..."
Angelia’s expression twisted into something almost pitying.
"I’ll make it quick. For the revolution. For the world..."
She raised the spear.
Ethan looked up at her, blood in his mouth, and still found a thin smile.
"You really do talk too much...niece."
I really am stupid. he thought, his eyes closing down.
I failed...father.
⚡!
The lightning that fell was not Ethan’s.
It was much, much older. Much denser and heavier. The type that had once split mountains and rewritten the rules of the world.
It struck the ridge directly above Angelia’s position with the force of a divine judgment.
The entire cliff face detonated outward in a spray of molten rock and white fire. The shockwave flattened what remained of the twelve elites and sent Angelia flying like a discarded doll.
Ethan felt the residual current crawl across his skin and, for the first time since the fight began, the cold lightning around him felt...warm. He didn’t know what happened.
As the system interface stabilized enough to be readable:
[Emergency Intervention Detected]
[Source: Restricted]
[Host status critical]
[Stabilizing...]
He could not move. The small creature was still pressed against him, white filaments of hair standing straight up as they drank the new static.
Above the ruined ridge, the dust slowly cleared.
Angelia rose from the rubble, one arm bent in the wrong direction, yellow divinity flickering like a dying flame. She stared at the sky with something close to genuine fear.
"That...wasn’t you."
Ethan coughed blood and managed a rasping laugh.
"Told you. The gods really don’t like me. But there is one who does..."
A new presence settled over the battlefield.
It did not land over them. It was there the whole time, choosing only now to exist, weight pressing down on every living thing still conscious.
The small creature made a soft, reverent sound and tried to hide further under Ethan’s arm.
Angelia’s remaining divinity flared in pure defensive panic.
"No. No, he wouldn’t—"
A calm, almost bored voice drifted down from the empty air.
Demigod Angelia, you have broken the law.
Ethan felt the name land in his bones like a second lightning strike.
Angelia dropped to one knee so fast it looked involuntary. "My King, I was just following ord—"
I heard...
The pressure increased as Angelia’s yellow light guttered further.
You will withdraw...Do not force me to correct you again.
Angelia’s jaw clenched hard enough that blood ran from her lip again. She looked at Ethan one last time—hatred, pure hatred, and a reluctant recognition all mixed together.
"This isn’t over...uncle."
Then she was gone, yellow force carrying the few survivors who could still move.
The pressure did not lift.
Ethan forced his head up, searching the empty air.
My son...
After those words, silence returned to the ridge.
Ethan lay there for a long time, staring at the clear sky, feeling the small warm weight of the creature against his side.
"Zeus...? Father?"
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