novelraw Chapter 1041: The Gate Begins to Open
Chapter 1041: The Gate Begins to Open
Ethan saw it—and excitement hit him immediately.
He hadn’t expected the battle to tilt this way.
Almost at the same time, he drew every last strand of white lightning under his control. Dense arcs gathered in his hands, then spread outward in layers, forming sheets of thunderstorm that hung directly above Varex’s head.
He understood one thing perfectly.
Elysion’s people weren’t just physical beings.
They were split into body and soul. Even if the body was destroyed, the soul could still get one chance at rebirth.
So against them, smashing the flesh wasn’t enough. The instant their body broke, he had to use white lightning to blast the soul apart too—only then was it truly finished.
Varex clearly realized that as well.
For the first time, real fear showed in his eyes. He hadn’t imagined that inside Emerald Castle’s army there was someone like Desert Queen Kaelira—someone who could trade blows with him head-on.
And if you looked closely, Kaelira wasn’t completely relaxed either.
Her body had started to tremble faintly. Behind her, vast wisps of violet-crimson energy flickered in and out, bound tightly to the earth below.
It was that endless supply that let her maintain this level of output, keeping Varex pinned under continuous pressure.
Even so, Varex’s physical body was still outrageously tough.
Kaelira had been pushing her power for a long time—yet she still hadn’t fully destroyed him.
Right then—
Several figures shot into the sky at the same time.
Queen Seraphine.
Phoenix Queen Ignara.
Queen Elowen.
The three of them struck almost simultaneously.
Three different forces—different in nature, yet equally violent—crashed down from separate angles, leaving Varex no room to turn or breathe. This wasn’t probing, and it wasn’t stalling.
It was a full combined execution.
The moment the blows landed head-on, Varex’s body finally couldn’t take it.
Flesh and bone tore apart in the high sky. His entire frame began to collapse, then exploded into pieces, ripped into scattered chunks.
Ethan didn’t waste the opening.
He steadied his breath in an instant, pushed his power higher again, and sent sheets of white lightning roaring out, flooding straight into the shattered remains of Varex’s body.
In the blink of an eye, the chunks that hadn’t yet scattered continued to detonate under the thunderlight—and the Soulforce leaking out was swept up with them.
Less than a breath.
Varex was reduced to shredded meat.
And his remaining Soulforce was ground down under white lightning until it vanished completely, leaving him no chance—none—for rebirth.
Ethan didn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat. He lunged in.
He cut through the lingering blood mist and chaotic energy, reached into the wreckage of Varex’s ruined body, and pulled out a blood-red energy core.
The instant it landed in his hand, an incredibly dense power fluctuation rolled outward. Just a thread of that aura leaking free was enough to jolt the spirit—enough to make the energy inside one’s body stir restlessly.
And it wasn’t only Emerald Castle that saw it.
Varex’s army saw it too.
Eyes widened everywhere, faces full of disbelief.
No matter what, they hadn’t believed one of Elysion’s most formidable existences could die here—die this completely.
But they didn’t get time to recover from the shock.
Because in the very next instant, Emerald Castle launched a full offensive.
Ship firepower, summoned troops, and the powerhouses of every race crushed forward together. The Elysion formation—already shaken by Varex’s fall—was torn apart in a single hit. The front line that tried to resist was blasted down in rapid succession. The rear, still hesitating, didn’t even have time to stabilize before the wave of pressure swallowed them whole.
It didn’t take long before more than half of them were killed on the spot.
And the energy cores they carried were gathered up immediately.
The power sealed in those cores was just as astonishing.
If they pooled them all, it would be enough to feed straight into the surrounding energy barrier—raising the defensive formation they’d already established by another whole tier, forging a stronger shield wall around the stronghold.
Ethan had no intention of leaving just like that.
He understood perfectly: the most important thing right now wasn’t how far they could push forward, but how fast they could turn this place into a foothold they could actually hold.
They’d already carved open a huge number of spatial passages in these ruins. So the only problem left was the spatial turbulence inside the tunnels—the ripping, shredding chaos that chewed anything that tried to pass.
As long as they dealt with that, Emerald Castle and this place could truly be connected.
And once they were connected, reinforcements, energy, and supplies would pour in without end.
With that in mind, Ethan didn’t waste another second. He went straight to the spatial passage that led back to Emerald Castle.
The tunnel was still rotating slowly. The rune-light along its rim flickered between bright and dim, while inside, warped turbulence flashed constantly—countless layers of razor-edged ripples crossing and grinding against each other.
Ethan lifted a hand and tossed a large batch of energy cores directly into it.
The moment those cores touched the tunnel’s edge, they trembled, caught by the unstable spatial fluctuations inside.
Then Feylora and the Fairy folk around her moved together. Their power was like dense, bright threads—one after another winding in, wrapping the energy cores, melting them down, then feeding them bit by bit into the spatial passage’s structure.
The entire process was visible to the naked eye.
The turbulence that had been raging inside the tunnel began to weaken—inch by inch—as that energy continued to pour in.
The sharpest, most violent waves were pressed down first. Then they thinned, gradually becoming less dense, and the internal flow-lines of the tunnel stabilized noticeably compared to before.
Ethan stared at it, and his eyes lit up on the spot.
This method actually worked.
And if it worked, he wasn’t about to hold back.
Ethan immediately gave the order—gather everything they could mobilize in this region and feed it into the passage, nonstop.
Energy devices across the camp, the newly collected cores, even the remaining rune power in the surrounding area were quickly drawn in and guided over—then dumped into the rotating channel in a single continuous surge.
It didn’t take long before the tunnel changed again.
Inside the twisted, lethal structure, a relatively smooth route was forced open.
It was no longer just a fissure filled with turbulence.
It was a true vortex passage—something you could actually travel through.
Only...
It still wasn’t big enough.
And it still wasn’t stable enough.
Right now, the passage was usable, but the whole thing still wavered. Tiny collapses and distortions flickered along the rim from time to time. And most importantly—
It could only let one person pass at a time.