"Hmp!!"

Standing back up, Ethen saw Adam already running straight toward the black draconic beast that had just burned Vlad. The man moved with crazy speed, kicking up dirt as he closed the distance.

At that point, Ethen didn’t hold back at all.

He opened his summoning space wide, calling out his summons and sending them rushing into the crater.

The calm mood from earlier was completely gone, replaced by raw killing intent. Ethen knew this place was dangerous, full of weird ruins and monsters nobody in the Bastion fully understood yet.

Still, seeing Vlad’s face get burned like that really pissed him off.

Vlad was one of his best fighters, an S-Rank summon who had helped him through countless deadly fights. Seeing him on his knees, clutching a blackened, ruined face while smoking ash peeled off his skin, crossed a line.

He had seen more than enough.

He didn’t even reach for his Storm Crossbow this time. Crossbows were good for picking off enemies from a distance, but right now, Ethen wanted to cut something open with his bare hands.

Instead, Ethen reached into his gear and pulled out a heavy saber with thick animal fur wrapped around the grip.

The blade immediately gave off a strange, heavy pressure that chilled the air around his fingers.

This was a genuine Demi-god weapon. Ethen had traded for it back in the human realm of Bark, using rare parts he had ripped from high-tier monsters in the beast lands.

It wasn’t made to blast big holes in the ground with raw magical explosions.

Its real job was much nastier, designed specifically to ruin an enemy’s body from the inside.

The saber carried two cruel passive skills etched into the steel:

[Disabler: When you hit an enemy repeatedly, this saber randomly shuts down one vital function inside their body.]

[Flesh Eater: Any cut from this blade rots the enemy’s skin super fast, burning them up from the inside out.]

The two skills worked together like poison and a blade.

Neither was meant to kill a strong enemy in one hit; they were made to break an opponent’s body down piece by piece until they couldn’t even stand.

One skill shut down vital organs or senses, turning off muscles, eyes, or breathing at random.

The other skill melted the skin and muscle right off the bone with rapid, rotting decay.

It was basically a walking sickness packed into a sharp piece of metal.

Ethen squeezed the furry handle tightly, feeling the cold steel hum against his skin.

He didn’t waste any more time talking or thinking about plans.

He charged right into the fight alongside his summons, the whole group sprinting across the dirt toward the black beast.

The crater, however, wasn’t going to let them just walk over and take their revenge.

As they ran across the rocky floor, the ground cracked open with loud snaps. Several giant, worm-like monsters suddenly burst out from under the dirt, throwing rocks everywhere.

One shot out of the ground with a wet screech.

Then another rose right behind it.

Then another five burst through the stone.

Their long, pale bodies shot out from the soil one after another, snapping rings of sharp teeth straight at Ethen and his team.

The surprise attack forced the group to break up their clean line. Some summons stopped to smash the worms, while the rest kept running straight ahead through the dirt.

Ethen’s eyes narrowed into slits as he jumped over a spraying pool of worm acid.

*’Yeah, I get it now.’*

He sneered as he watched the black draconic beast standing in the center of the mess.

He had noticed a simple rule out here in the wild: strong beasts naturally had some control over weaker beasts of their own kind.

It was just how nature worked—the biggest predator ruled the pack and told the little ones what to do.

At the Demi-god level, though, that rule got twisted into something much worse.

A Demi-god beast wasn’t limited to bossing around its own species anymore. It had enough raw mental weight and soul pressure to force completely different types of monsters to obey its commands.

That was exactly what was happening right here in this basin.

These ugly worm monsters weren’t attacking because they were hungry or defending their home.

They were being used like cheap meat shields to slow Ethen down.

Ethen stared hard at the black draconic beast while his frontline cleared a path through the thrashing worms.

For a few tense seconds, neither side moved.

The beast stood completely still among the rocks, watching Ethen with cold, yellow eyes.

Then—it broke into motion.

A nasty, mocking grin spread across its scaly face, looking way too smart for an ordinary animal.

Its body suddenly started twisting and bending in gross, unnatural ways. The hard black scales melted down like hot wax, turning into dark sludge as its big dragon shape shrank down fast.

Bones snapped and popped loudly as they slid into new spots.

Its thick bulk shrank down to a fraction of its original size.

The scary dragon monster was completely gone in the blink of an eye, replaced by a sleek, black wolf with glowing eyes.

Without fighting back at all, it turned around and bolted across the rocks.

Ethen’s face went cold with pure fury.

"It’s him!!"

Everything made complete sense now.

The thing was playing with them the entire time. It had burned Vlad, let itself get spotted on purpose, and was now running away just to pull them deeper into its territory.

Ethen ground his teeth until his jaw hurt.

He quickly summoned the Mind Dragon beneath him with a sharp pull on his mental link.

The big crystalline beast appeared mid-step, scooping Ethen up onto its broad back before blasting into the air with a heavy, booming flap of its wings.

Down below, the shadow beast was already moving with terrifying speed.

It wasn’t trying to turn around and fight the group; it was sprinting straight toward the broken wooden ship stuck in the crater wall.

Ethen’s eyes turned razor sharp as the wind whipped against his face.

Back when Adam had first wandered into this area alone, he had been ambushed and badly beat up by this exact same shadow monster. Their whole trip out here from the citadel was just to hunt it down and check out that weird ship.

And now the bastard had the guts to jump out again, burn Vlad, and laugh in their faces?

Ethen wasn’t about to let it slip away a second time.

As the Mind Dragon tore through the gray sky, Adam suddenly leaped onto its shoulder, his bare feet gripping the dragon’s scales easily without slipping.

All of Adam’s usual chill attitude was gone.

There was no lazy smile on his face.

No peaceful look in his eyes.

None of that quiet, relaxed vibe where he could sit in the grass with beasts all afternoon without a care in the world.

His golden eyes were sharp, locked-in, and full of raw violence.

It looked totally different from how he usually acted around the camp, but it made total sense given who he really was.

This Adam was out for blood, ready to tear something apart.

"Hela! Take the lead down there!"

Ethen yelled over the rushing wind, handing full control of his ground summons over to her through his soul link.

Normally, a summoner couldn’t just hand their contracted beasts to someone else because the soul link was tied to their own mind.

His special class, though, didn’t follow the normal rules of the Bastion.

Down on the ground, Hela gave a sharp, confident nod that cut through the chaos.

She didn’t waste a single second taking charge. She looked straight at Morgana and yelled, "Clear the air above us!"

Morgana raised her staff with a dark chant, calling out a swarm of lesser drakes that quickly stormed out.

Next, Hela pointed her curved blade right at Arthur.

Arthur immediately called out his silver phantom knights, who leaped onto the waiting drakes to form a fast, vanguard.

Off to the side, Ella climbed onto Gilgamesh’s massive bronze shoulder, pulling out her heavy bow to start shooting down the rising worms with explosive arrows.

The whole team moved together like clockwork.

Nobody hesitated, and nobody got confused about their job. Ethen had passed the controls to Hela, and she turned them into a clean, deadly war machine in seconds.

Up above, the black wolf reached the base of the wreck.

"He’s going into the boat," Adam said quietly from behind Ethen, his voice dead flat and colder than ice.

His eyes didn’t leave the dark shape slipping into the broken hull through a jagged hole in the wood.

"Stay sharp," Ethen told him, leaning low against the dragon’s neck.

Adam gave a short, cold nod, his bare fists clenching tight.

Whatever wild instinct lived inside the First Man, this monster had poked it the wrong way. It wasn’t just simple anger; it was the raw drive of an ancient hunter tracking down something that needed to die.

Ethen looked back at the giant wreck looming ahead.

The old wooden ship sat lodged in the rock wall like a dead leviathan, dark, rotting, and completely eerie.

"We’re not letting him walk out of there alive," Ethen muttered, gripping the saber’s handle until his knuckles went pale.

He pushed the Mind Dragon down into a hard, steep dive, cutting right through the gray fog hanging over the ship’s broken railing.

The dragon flared its massive wings to slow its fall, slamming its heavy claws onto the wooden deck with an earth-shaking crash.

Boom!!

The heavy hit shook the whole ship, sending clouds of old, dry dust into the air as the thick wood groaned under their weight.

Ethen jumped down off the saddle, rolling cleanly onto his feet with his weapon ready.

Adam dropped down right behind him without making a single sound, his sharp eyes scanning the dark doorways leading inside.

Down below them, Hela and the others locked down the outside perimeter, setting up a perimeter that blocked any way for the beast to slip back out into the ship.

The broken deck was dead quiet.

The shadow wolf was nowhere to be seen, leaving only a nasty, burnt ash trail that led straight down into the lower rooms.

Ethen held his saber tight, feeling the cold steel ready for a fight.

They were finally inside the ship.

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