Ethan Cole - The Unlimited System

The first clash of steel and flame turned the ritual platform into a battlefield.

Ethan did not wait for the enemy to reach him. As the first three soldiers charged in with their weapons glowing with elemental powers, he surged forward.

His grip on the Flame Dragon Sword was firm now.

Each step he took was steady and filled with growing confidence. He twisted his body, brought the sword around in a wide horizontal sweep, and unleashed a wave of fire that split the air.

"Don't come and haunt me later," he muttered as he killed. "I'm left with no choice, too."

The flame didn't just burn. It roared.

A crimson arc shot from the blade and swept across the floor, catching all three soldiers mid-stride. One screamed as the fire tore through his armor.

Another was lifted off the ground and slammed into a pillar, his body already aflame.

The last managed to raise a barrier, but it shattered on impact. His scream was short. Then he collapsed in a heap of burning metal.

Three deaths. Three Ascendant Cores absorbed.

"Let's attack him together!" One of the soldiers shouted.

A few soldiers trembled in fear upon recognizing Ethan's strength. They understood that they were no match for him, yet they still hesitated to back down, fearing the wrath of either the Elder or Lord Qiren.

Another soldier shouted, "Maintain formation!"

"What formation?! We didn't have the same kind of training!"

Ethan smiled as he observed the enemies struggling with teamwork. He remained indifferent to their difficulties.

The sword pulsed with heat in Ethan's hand. The hilt felt more alive than before as if it were drinking in the chaos around it.

From behind, one of the Higher Two-Star captives, the silver-haired man, gasped loudly. "He took them down in a single swing…"

The other man, Renshir, looked on with wide eyes. "That sword... is it feeding on their energy?"

"I think it is," whispered Malika, the female Three-Star, her voice trembling with something between fear and awe. "I've never seen anything like it."

"What should we do now? Help him?" the other woman asked.

"How?" Renshir asked. "We'll just get in his way."

That was when another group of soldiers rushed at Ethan from the sides. Five this time. They moved in formation, each watching the other's back, clearly trained for this kind of engagement.

"Circle him! Force him into a corner!"

"Block the sword! He's nothing without that blade!"

They closed in quickly, their weapons raised high, their powers surging.

"They seemed trained," Ethan muttered as he activated his Divine Eyes once more.

He preferred not to keep them activated for long, as the overload of information would distort his vision.

Ethan had already adjusted his stance. He didn't want to be cornered, so he pivoted and slipped between the two of them.

His footwork was clean and instinctive. He slashed behind him, the blade trailing fire. The sword struck true, slicing through the armor of one soldier. The flame that followed exploded outward like a grenade.

The second man tried to react, but Ethan twisted again and drove the sword into his chest. The moment it pierced flesh, flames burst from his back and engulfed the third soldier behind him.

Chaos followed. Screams echoed. The formation broke. One soldier fell to his knees, trying to put out the fire that had climbed up his arms. The others ran, stumbling over each other.

Ethan exhaled slowly, his eyes burning as bright as the fire around him. The cores continued to flow into the sword. He could feel it in his bones.

From the sidelines, Malika could no longer hold back her shock.
"He's not fighting like a Vessel. His power didn't really come from him."

There was a reason why people felt this way. None of the flames came from Ethan's body. They could see that everything originated from the sword, which was clearly Ethan's source of strength.

The other woman, trembling, whispered with wide eyes, "I thought he was the weakest… but now..."

Ethan didn't hear them. His focus was razor-sharp. The fire inside him burned with clarity.

He moved again, this time toward another squad that had just entered from the far side of the hall. There were at least twenty of them, drawn from both the Velharis and Kannan empires.

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They were well-armed, disciplined, and cautious.

Seeing what had happened to the others, they could feel fear creeping into their hearts.

Ethan kept moving. Every swing of the Flame Dragon Sword left trails of heat and burning air. The hall was turning into a furnace. Flames danced around his feet and rolled off his shoulders like waves.

Each enemy that fell added another core to the sword. He could feel the build-up, the rising power humming through the blade like a living creature growing stronger with every heartbeat.

'Just a bit more,' he thought, slashing through another soldier who barely raised his shield in time. 'Twelve, maybe thirteen more cores. That should be enough for Level 2.'

The sword vibrated in his hands, hot and alive.

And then everything changed.

A roar cut through the battle.

"Terra Fist!" Elder Harran's voice rang out like thunder, heavy and sharp.

Ethan barely turned his head in time. The air cracked. A blur of brown shot toward him, and then all he could feel was impact.

The punch landed straight into the center of Ethan's sword, halting his swing mid-air. For the first time since the battle began, Ethan was forced back. His boots scraped the floor, and the sword vibrated violently in his hands.

The fire around him flickered and broke apart.

Ethan's eyes widened.

'He stopped me?'

Harran stood there, his right arm coated in jagged stone. It looked like a gauntlet carved from a mountain, thick and pulsing with veins of golden earth light.

Cracks sizzled with energy down his forearm, and his knuckles steamed from the force of the strike.

Ethan's arms trembled from the force. He lowered the sword slightly and stared at the man in front of him.

'Is it because he was a true Higher Three-Star...'

If only Ethan knew that the truth behind the strength and power of either the Ascendant or the Vessel wasn't just the rank. There was another crucial factor that Ethan was unaware of.

'If I gauge him based on the system… his attributes must be just below 800. Maybe twenty, thirty points away at most. And yet… he hits like a monster.'

Ethan stepped back and rolled his wrist to ease the numbness in his hand.

'No. That's not it. It's not just his raw stats,' Ethan thought.

His mind was racing to understand everything behind Elder Harran's strength.

That was when it hit him. The only thing that he lacked right now, was the elemental power.

'His elemental power… that must be it. Some kind of multiplier. That punch had more weight than it should have.'

He lowered his stance slightly.

Elder Harran's stone-arm crumbled slowly, bits of dust falling from his fist as he took a slow step forward.

"Are you done playing with my soldiers?" the Elder asked, voice low but filled with authority.

Ethan didn't answer.

He had to think. Fast.

This wasn't a soldier he could tear through.

This was a true powerhouse. A Vessel who had sharpened his strength through decades of mastery.

Behind them, the captives watched with open mouths. Even Malika had stood up halfway, gripping the bars as if doing so could somehow steady her breath.

"He stopped him," she whispered.

Renshir's face was pale. "Not just stopped. He matched him. With one hit."

The silver-haired man nodded slowly. "That's the Elder of the Kannan Empire… He wasn't bluffing when he said he could crush any uprising in seconds."

Ethan readjusted his grip on the sword.

'I need to push this to Level 2. That's the only way I can get a boost strong enough to close this gap. Unless…'

Ethan tightened his grip on the Flame Dragon Sword, the heat licking at his fingers like it was ready to be let loose again.

He glanced over his shoulder at the other captives—Malika, Renshir, the silver-haired man, and the woman. Their faces were still pale from the previous clash, but they were alert, watching him closely.

He jerked his chin toward the shadows at the far edge of the hall. A simple signal.

'Go.'

They understood right away.

Without a word, the four of them began to move, crouching low, slipping between broken pillars and flaming debris. The fire Ethan had unleashed earlier still burned in some places, creating the perfect cover.

If they could disappear behind those flames, they might just make it out of the ritual hall without being noticed.

Ethan exhaled slowly.

'I hope they make it,' he thought. 'At least let a few walk out of this mess alive.'

But now, he had a job to do, keeping all eyes on him.

Elder Harran stepped forward again, earth pulsing faintly at his feet. Every movement of his boots sent a soft vibration through the ground. It was a warning.

"Still standing?" the Elder asked calmly.

Ethan didn't answer. Instead, he lunged.

The Flame Dragon Sword came alive in his hands as he swung wildly toward the soldiers nearby. They had regrouped after Harran's earlier attack, but now their formation crumbled as Ethan became a storm of fire and steel.

"Don't let him get close!" one shouted.

But it was too late.

Ethan was already in the middle of them.

One soldier swung his spear, only for Ethan to duck beneath it, spin, and slice upward. The blade cut through the armor and roasted the man from the inside. Another soldier tried to step back and cast a water barrier, but Ethan drove forward and split the shield with a fiery thrust straight into his chest.

Screams filled the air again. Panic rippled through the ranks.

"He's going berserk!"

"Pull back!"

"Where are the reinforcements?!"

Ethan didn't let up. He needed their deaths. More than that—he needed their cores.

Each one fell, the sword drank, and Ethan felt the surge of raw power flood into the blade. The hilt glowed hot, veins of crimson light pulsing up toward the blade's tip.

'Come on,' he thought. 'Just a few more. Just enough to push it to the next level.'

But Harran wasn't going to let him have it easy.

With a sharp stomp, the Elder raised both hands. "Terra Grasp."

Chunks of the floor beneath Ethan cracked and broke open, and massive hands made of compact earth shot out from beneath, grabbing for Ethan's legs.

'What is this?' Ethan was curious because this was the first time he saw this kind of elemental attack.

As he was thinking about the attack, he jumped back, twisting midair, but one hand clipped his boot and dragged him down.

He slammed into the floor hard.

The impact rattled his bones. Before he could stand, another fist—real, not made of stone—came barreling toward his chest.

Ethan rolled.

The punch struck the floor, shattering the tiles where his body had been.

Elder Harran stood just a few feet away now, fists glowing with pulsing brown light. His eyes weren't calm anymore, they were sharp and furious.

"You think you can walk in here and turn this place upside down?" he growled.

Ethan wiped blood from his lip, rising to one knee.

"You really talk a lot for someone afraid of a broken ritual," Ethan said, eyes narrowing.

He lifted the sword again.

Another wave of soldiers tried to surround him, but this time, they moved cautiously, giving the Elder space.

'They're hesitating,' Ethan realized. 'They don't want to get in Harran's way. That gives me openings.'

Still, on the defensive, he let them come closer.

He sidestepped a swing and countered with a spinning slash that launched a burning crescent. It slammed into three soldiers and sent them flying, their cores immediately sucked into the sword.

Then he felt it.

A pulse. A flash of searing heat.

The sword in his hands lit up.