Not long after, a guard emerged from behind a pillar.
He walked over to Ethan's side and nudged him with his toe to flip him over.
Ethan lay flat on his back, his arms spread wide. The dark green lines on his face had deepened even further.
The guard's vertical pupils stared at his face for a couple of seconds before a stream of murky water snorted from his nostrils.
He bent down, grabbed Ethan by the back of his neck, and hoisted him off the ground.
Ethan's legs dragged along the stone floor, his toes scraping lightly against the seams between the flagstones.
At the far end of the hall, a coral throne towered atop seven steps.
Carved from a single piece of deep-sea blood coral, the throne stood over five meters tall. Its branching arms stretched in all directions, with a fist-sized luminous pearl embedded at the tip of each branch.
Dark red lines of light pulsed within the blood coral, perfectly synchronized with the runic frequency of the array beneath the throne.
Boulder sat upon the throne.
He wore a deep blue short robe, cinched at the waist with a belt inlaid with emerald-blue crystals.
A suppressed rage seethed within his pale blue eyes, yet a smirk played at the corners of his mouth.
The guard let go.
Ethan collapsed before the steps of the throne, rolling halfway over on the stone floor to lie face-down.
Boulder looked down at the half-dead body at the bottom of the steps, his smirk widening slightly.
“Genos Bezos?”
His voice echoed through the hall. The luminous pearls on the coral throne vibrated slightly with his words, casting an even brighter, cold light.
“Or should I call you Ethan Leo?”
Ethan's fingers twitched against the stone floor.
He pushed against the ground, forcing his upper body up.
The movement was agonizingly slow, his arms trembling, pausing with every inch he rose.
The dark green energy lines crept out from his sleeves, stretching all the way down his forearms to his wrists.
He raised his head and looked at the round face on the throne.
“Heh.”
A muffled chuckle escaped Ethan's throat.
“Cough, cough, cough.” He hacked twice, dark green blood foaming at the corners of his mouth and dripping from his chin onto the stone. “Little sea dragon, your old man just paid a ransom of thirty million magic stones, plus thirteen hundred years of development rights for one hundred and thirty-seven mid and small worlds, just to keep you alive. Oh, and a lifetime ban from ever leaving the deep sea.”
He raised a hand, wiping the bloody foam from his lips with the back of his hand.
“I didn't expect you to cherish it so little.”
The smile instantly vanished from Boulder's face.
He stood up from his throne, the suppressed rage in his pale blue eyes practically spilling over.
“Shut up!”
The roar of his voice shook the giant luminous pearl on the dome, causing it to vibrate violently.
Ripples of pale gold energy spread outward from beneath the throne, flowing along the runic carvings on the walls to encompass the entire hall.
Ethan coughed again.
He pushed off his knees and stood up.
His movements were not fast, but they were steady.
Though the dark green lines still spread across his face and blood stained his lips, his spine was perfectly straight.
Standing at the foot of the throne, he looked up at Boulder.
“I've always preferred to be direct,” Ethan said, his voice raspy. “Boulder, what exactly are you trying to do?”
The moment the words left his mouth, a blinding blue light erupted beneath his feet.
The light poured from the cracks between the flagstones where he stood, from the runic carvings on the walls, and from the luminous pearl on the dome.
Countless blue lines of light interlaced, twisted, and overlapped on the floor, outlining a massive array over ten meters in diameter with Ethan at its center.
The runic patterns within the array were intricate to the extreme.
There were three thousand seven hundred main lines, each branching into twelve secondary lines, which in turn split into thirty-six fine lines.
Every line pulsed in a frenzy of motion, and an emerald-blue glow surged from deep within them, illuminating the entire hall as if it were submerged in the deep ocean.
A circular barrier of light rose from the edge of the array.
The barrier was translucent, its surface swirling with dense runes that vibrated at high speeds, emitting a low, heavy hum.
Ethan looked down at the array beneath his feet.
The runic lines had already crept up to his ankles, the emerald-blue light crawling upward from the soles of his boots.
Boulder stood before his throne, looking down at Ethan in the center of the array.
“Heh,” Boulder sneered, the coldness of his smirk enough to freeze seawater. “You want to die? I won't let you have it that easy.”
The runes within the array suddenly accelerated.
Emerald-blue light erupted from every single line, weaving into an impenetrable net of light above Ethan's head.
The net pressed down from the dome, surged up from the floor, and closed in from all directions.
“In thirty seconds, you will be teleported to my arena.”
Boulder sat back down on his coral throne. “If you survive, our slate is wiped clean.”
He paused, his smirk widening a fraction more.
“Oh, and by the way, your opponents are 1.13 million Triangular Cannibal Crabs.”
The array was now spinning too fast for the naked eye to track.
The emerald-blue light swallowed Ethan's figure entirely, leaving only a blurry silhouette standing in the center of the glow.
Seeing this, Ethan made no move to resist.
Even in his current state, escaping would only take a single thought.
However, the moment he heard the number "1.13 million," he froze all thoughts of leaving.
1.13 million. That wasn't just a hundred and thirteen.
How much Life Energy would that be?
And so, Ethan stood firmly in the center of the array, watching the stone flagstones beneath his feet decompose inch by inch into basic energy particles under the influence of the runic lines.
The emerald-blue light climbed past his ankles, his knees, his waist, and his chest.
He looked at Boulder on the throne.
The corners of his mouth curved upward.
“Cancel the coordinates for Anchor Point 1. Re-establish anchor coordinates.”
【Coordinates for Anchor Point 1 have been cleared. Please select a new anchor location.】
“Current coordinates.”
【Current coordinates anchored. Location: Wizard World - District 77 - Lunser Palace of the Sea Race.】
【Anchor Point 1: Wizard World - District 77 - Lunser Palace of the Sea Race.】
The light suddenly contracted.
The emerald-blue light within the array compressed to its limit in an instant, forming a blue orb of light less than a meter in diameter.
Dense runic patterns flowed across the surface of the orb, and with each rotation, a visible ripple of space expanded into the surroundings.
In the next second, the orb exploded, dissolving into countless tiny motes of light that vanished into the air.
Boulder leaned back against his coral throne, his fingers continuing to tap gently against the edge of the armrest.
He stared at the charred mark of the array at the foot of the throne, the residual glow of the still-vibrating runes reflected in his pale blue eyes.
Beside him, a guard knelt on one knee. “Your Highness, the arena is ready. The swarm of Triangular Cannibal Crabs completed their assembly three days ago. As per your instructions, the arena's energy barrier has been raised to the maximum level, and the one-way lock on the teleportation channel has been confirmed.”
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