Chapter 215: Trapped

Flashes of blinding light violently burned through the dark skyline as the two Demi Gods exchanged brutal blows.

Their physical movements were entirely too fast for ordinary, mortal beings to track with the naked eye.

Each massive collision between their weapons sent visible, destructive waves of kinetic power rippling through the surrounding atmosphere.

The very fabric of space between them seemed to physically distort and groan with every single high-speed exchange.

The ancient Divine Beast Mountain was in absolutely no way weaker than the heavily fortified Bastion of Humanity.

If anything, its diverse, heavily mutated forces were just as terrifying and unpredictable on the battlefield.

The Mountain leadership deliberately recruited the absolute most unique, bizarre beasts living in the Demi-human territories.

They specifically targeted anomalies with unconventional, conceptual powers that could not be easily countered by standard human magic.

This particular beast-kin was highly well-known on the front lines.

Inkface.

He was a veteran Demi God of the elusive Squid Clan, officially belonging to the massive Ocean Clan situated across the Great Sea.

The Demi-humans ran a highly classified, dedicated military program strictly for bringing powerful monsters from the deep ocean into their ground forces.

The dark depths of the ocean were completely filled with terrifying creatures that had evolved in crushing, lightless environments.

Their underwater survival naturally demanded bizarre abilities that were completely, fundamentally different from those found on land.

Inkface was one of the absolute deadliest monsters they had ever successfully recruited to the surface.

His unique, shifting abilities were strange and abstract enough to make him particularly troublesome for human elites.

“You can actually keep up with my spatial teleportation? That’s certainly something.”

Ethen sighed heavily as another glowing blue number suddenly appeared in his retinas.

[2,340,890 / 20,000,000 enemies killed.]

[2,340,899 / 20,000,000 enemies killed.]

The mechanical numbers continued to rapidly, mercilessly rise in his peripheral vision.

Every single time Jormungander brought sudden catastrophe to another populated location, the massive number of deaths connected to Ethen’s mission increased.

“Unfortunately for your people, you can’t actually stop me.”

Ethen sighed again, casually taking a direct, heavy hit from one of Inkface’s shifting tentacles.

The raw physical force sent him flying backward through the air.

But before the grinning Inkface could immediately follow up on the attack, Jor suddenly disappeared completely from sight.

Far, far away, in the burning city Ethen had just left behind, Jormungander silently initiated another localized catastrophe.

The solid ground violently began to shake.

Towering buildings trembled and collapsed into thick dust.

And the terrified people trapped within the dying city had absolutely no idea that the human source of their destruction had already moved on.

“Who exactly says I’m here to stop your little pet?”

Inkface smiled, his inky beard shifting violently across his scarred face.

“I’m strictly here to kill you!”

He launched his massive, armored fist directly forward.

A massive, suffocating wave of thick black liquid violently erupted from his physical body.

It rapidly spread through the surrounding space like a living plague before forcefully forming a gigantic, impenetrable orb around the two Demi Gods.

The terrifying black liquid did not simply surround them in the sky like a standard magical barrier.

It conceptually, absolutely sealed the entire area off from reality.

The average human summoner fighting on the front lines was incredibly strong and highly versatile.

However, once they successfully entered the advanced Demi God stage, they would naturally be heavily limited by the system.

They were strictly required to switch or refine their classes, consolidating their power.

That harsh limitation usually made most veteran summoners significantly less terrifying than they had been at the lower, chaotic stages.

But Ethen was one of the absolute, legendary exceptions to that fundamental rule.

According to Inkface’s highly classified military intelligence, Ethen possessed the impossible ability to summon fully realized Demi God Beasts.

That meant fighting him head-on was essentially the exact same as fighting six veteran Demi Gods at once.

It was precisely why the beast-kin higher-ups had specifically chosen Inkface for this assassination.

“You’re absolutely not getting out of this one, human.”

Inkface proudly spread his muscular arms wide as the massive black orb completely enclosed them in absolute darkness.

“This orb physically and spiritually separates you from the Spirit World, so don’t even bother trying to summon your little friends.”

His cruel, jagged grin widened in the dark.

“We are going to sit peacefully right here in the dark until the very end of the war.”

He had been officially, specifically sent to deal with Ethen’s rampage.

The arrogant higher-ups did not actually believe Inkface could successfully kill the human Envoy in a straight fight.

They knew Ethen’s raw strength and impossible durability were entirely too troublesome for a standard assassination.

But they were absolutely confident in something else entirely.

Inkface could perfectly contain him.

As long as Ethen remained heavily trapped inside this isolated dimension, he could not interfere with the rest of the battlefield.

“Hmmm, this is certainly…”

Ethen narrowed his dark eyes, feeling the absolute, suffocating disconnect from the world.

He immediately attempted to use Jormungander’s World Traversing to warp out of the cage.

Absolutely nothing happened.

The divine ability simply failed to activate, leaving him securely trapped inside the dark, floating world made entirely from Inkface’s power.

Ethen stared completely silently at the shifting, liquid surroundings.

This was officially the very first time he had ever encountered a trap like this since arriving in the Nether Realm.

Even the Almighty Duke Ao had been completely unable to stop his spatial movements in the restaurant.

Yet this strange, old squid man had somehow successfully created an isolated environment that prevented Jormungander’s S-Ranked ability from functioning.

That was quite genuinely confusing.

Ethen’s handsome expression completely hardened into stone.

He immediately began testing absolutely every single option available to him.

Vlad appeared first, his vampiric aura heavily suppressed and flickering wildly in the dark.

Then Morgana emerged, her psychic waves immediately bouncing uselessly off the thick ink walls.

Arthur followed, his holy sword completely unable to pierce the liquid conceptual barrier.

Gilgamesh came next, his golden portals refusing to open in a space disconnected from reality.

One after another, Ethen rapidly summoned his absolute strongest, most reliable summons into the strange ink-filled world.

Yet every single one of them failed to break the cage.

The absolute separation from the Spirit World violently prevented them from receiving the constant spiritual support they desperately needed to function.

Every single violent attempt they made to escape the black orb completely failed, absorbed by the ink.

For the very first time since the global war had violently started, true, genuine frustration appeared clearly on Ethen’s face.

His dark, cold eyes settled heavily on the old beast-kin standing before him.

Inkface had somehow completely merged with the liquid background of this strange world.

It was incredibly difficult to even accurately determine where his physical body ended and the suffocating ink surrounding him began.

“You do know the longer I stay trapped in here, the more of your people violently die in that city, right?”

Ethen stared directly, piercingly into the old man’s glowing eyes.

His voice remained incredibly calm, but there was a deep, burning ocean of anger boiling beneath it.

As long as Jor remained outside in his true, world-spanning form, the natural catastrophes would absolutely continue.

And as long as Ethen could not leave this place to recall him, he had absolutely no way of stopping the slaughter.

“That’s perfectly fine with me.”

Inkface merely smirked, completely unbothered by the rising death toll.

“I don’t have any blood family in this pathetic place, and the old bastard personally commanded this lockdown himself.”

Ethen’s facial expression completely darkened.

He had genuinely not expected such a cold, sociopathic response.

Inkface truly, completely did not care about the millions of innocent people dying right outside his orb.

Not even the people from his own allied side of the war.

Ethen didn’t fully know it yet, but Inkface had already successfully sent out a highly classified magical signal.

In a few short, agonizing seconds, the Almighty Duke Ao would probably physically appear right outside this cage.

The old man was simply buying the God Almighty enough time to arrive and crush the orb with Ethen inside it.

“Disgusting!”

Ethen violently spat a glob of saliva toward the dark void.

The sheer, unapologetic cruelty behind Inkface’s words genuinely disgusted him to his core.

Human cruelty and political backstabbing were certainly bad enough in the Bastion.

But the exact way these arrogant beasts treated their own vulnerable kin was somehow infinitely worse.

They were completely, willingly prepared to sacrifice entire, heavily populated cities and their own citizens simply to achieve a tactical objective.

Yet Ethen was absolutely not finished playing this game.

Unfortunately, he did not currently have a way to stop Jor’s catastrophe from inside here.

But he absolutely did have a way to get himself out.

Ethen’s dark eyes narrowed into thin, highly dangerous slits.

“I guess I’ll finally try that out.”

A faint, incredibly chilling smile slowly appeared on his handsome face.

Suddenly, without any warning, his entire head of dark hair completely turned a shocking, snow-white.

A blazing, terrifying red hue rapidly filled his pupils, transforming his eyes into something far more frightening and demonic than before.

His skin became completely pale, draining of blood, while his dense physical body grew slightly larger and far more imposing.

The ambient atmosphere directly around him changed instantly, radiating an absolute, suffocating terror.

Tyrant Transformation.

[Nullifier: All special abilities aimed at the user are violently converted into pure, unstable energy attacks. This absolute immunity includes spatial manipulations, karma curses, and tracking. Note: Can only be used when transformed.]

The exact moment the S-Ranked transformation was fully completed, something incredibly strange and terrifying happened to the cage.

The impenetrable black orb violently surrounding Ethen suddenly flickered and turned a bright, glowing blue.

Inkface’s arrogant expression instantly changed into one of sheer, unadulterated panic.

“What the hell?”

The entire isolated world of ink violently began to tremble and boil.

The conceptual seal holding the space together had been instantly, forcefully converted into raw, highly unstable kinetic energy by the Nullifier.

Then, the massive orb completely exploded.

A massive, world-shattering ball of blue flames violently erupted outward in every direction.

It effortlessly burned right through the surrounding space and scorched the very air around them to ash.

Inkface was immediately, brutally thrown backward through the sky by the sudden, overwhelming explosion of his own power.

For the very first time today, his scarred expression showed genuine, paralyzing shock.

He frantically pushed his aura and quickly recovered his balance mid-air, looking desperately toward the exact place where Ethen had been standing.

But there was absolutely no one there.

By the time Inkface finally got himself back together and cleared the smoke, the white-haired Tyrant was completely gone.