Chapter 581: The Divine Body Unsealed
"Such petty tricks won’t work on me," Aldric the First said with a low chuckle. The haughty imperial title he once used was gone, replaced with something far more grounded.
Ethan’s mind flared with urgency. ’Yaya, didn’t you say he wouldn’t detect your seeds?’
"I... I’m sorry, Brother!" Yaya’s voice trembled with guilt, almost breaking into tears.
"It’s fine. Don’t cry. It’s okay," Ethan soothed her quickly, sending what comfort he could to the spirit girl.
Before he could say more, Aldric barked, "Kid... catch!"
His aura erupted like a storm. In the blink of an eye, the vast pressure of his Imperial Aura condensed into a small, dull, yellowish sphere hovering in the air. The moment it formed, Aldric’s power plummeted. What had once been overwhelming might now flickered down to the strength of an ordinary Energy User. With a final flick of his wrist, the sphere flew toward Ethan.
Ethan caught it, stunned. The orb was no larger than an egg, yet in his hand it felt impossibly heavy, as if he were holding a nugget of pure gold. He looked from Aldric to his mother. The Lord of the Underworld gave him a slight, deliberate nod. Relief washed through him. If Aldric were hiding treachery, there was no way it could escape her sight.
"What do I do with it?" Ethan asked, gripping the weighty orb.
"Swallow it," the Lord of the Underworld instructed. "Refine it slowly."
Aldric’s lips twitched, and a strange glimmer danced in his eyes. "Lord of the Underworld, I’ve thought it over. I won’t serve as a mere soldier. Instead, I will walk beside this young man in the living world for a time. When I die, I will enter your service." His sudden shift in tone was too quick, too practiced. Ethan stared at him, bewildered, but the old man only smiled.
The Lord of the Underworld regarded him for a long moment. Then she said, "As long as you bear no hidden malice, when you come to the Underworld I will grant you dominion over a realm. Your authority will be no less than what you once commanded."
"Good!" Aldric roared with laughter. In an instant, his aura surged again, blazing with a strength that rivaled his Imperial Aura.
Ethan froze, dumbfounded. This sly old man... he had been holding back all along. Compared to such seasoned cunning, Ethan knew he was still far too green. Is it really wise to bring him back to Earth? He glanced at his mother, searching her expression. She offered no reply. Ethan exhaled heavily. It seemed the decision had already been made for him.
"I must go now, my son," his mother’s voice echoed gently in his ears. "The next time we meet may be at the time of the final battle."
Ethan opened his mouth, wanting to call out, but stopped himself.
"You must keep striving," she continued. "I never expected you to seize the Ancestral Dragon’s Imperial Aura. With that, your Vessel should now be unsealed."
Ethan’s heart skipped. Vessel? Unsealed? The words struck him like thunder.
"You are the Ancient Vessel—what some call the Divine Body," she said. "When I sent you away, I stripped it from you. The Divine Body consumes vast energy to advance, far more than a child could ever sustain. Had I left it with you, it would have drained your very life, and you would never have lived past ten years old. Worse still, once the Divine Body manifested, certain powers would have marked you. Alone, you could not possibly resist them."
Her gaze bore into him, grave and unyielding. "When you return to Earth, travel to the far southern lands. You will feel it there. Reclaim what is yours. It lies hidden within a small, sealed space."
At her command, the colossal Nether-Dragon stirred. Its skeletal wings, still clinging with scraps of torn membrane, thundered as they spread wide. With the Throne of the Underworld King upon its back and the Lord of the Underworld seated upon it, the dragon soared beneath the mass of black-armored soldiers.
The fractured sky above began to knit itself back together.
"You should leave as well," she called out one final time. "If you linger, you’ll be trapped here."
Her army of black-armored warriors shifted into a torrent of shadow, streaming with her into the fading rift. In a single heartbeat, they were gone.
Ethan stood in the silence, staring into the void long after it closed. Ancient Vessel. Divine Body. The words gnawed at him. If he had overheard the quiet conversations between Matriarch Whitmore and Aunt Melinda, he would have realized the truth—they had spoken of the Caelum family’s Divine Body bloodline. But that secret had never reached his ears.
All Ethan could think of now was his mother, once more slipping away from him just as quickly as she had appeared. The soldiers at her back had worn battle-scarred armor, etched with years of struggle. And his mother—though still towering in power—had carried a weariness in her voice he had never heard before. Since their last meeting, she must have endured countless more battles.
The sight stirred something deep within him, a hunger he had not truly felt until this moment. He wanted strength—not just to survive, but to stand beside her. Morzan had told him once to keep striving, that five years from now the world would need him. Back then, Ethan had brushed it off. He had been content to live a carefree life, to protect only the small circle of people he loved. He had never thought of himself as a savior. But now, watching his mother vanish once again into a battlefield that spanned realms, the desire to grow stronger burned hotter than ever.
But how? Could this Ethereal world truly shape him into a powerhouse great enough to rival even her? Could it take him further?
Aldric’s voice broke through his thoughts. "How do we leave this place?"
The world was settling back into order now that the Lord of the Underworld was gone. The rifts were knitting themselves shut, just as she had warned.
Ethan inhaled and raised his voice. "Shatterstar... come out!"
With a sound like mountains collapsing, the thousand-meter titan appeared, the mech’s steel frame blotting out the sky. It had been his final trump card in battle, though he had never had the chance to use it. Now, it would be his only means of returning home. The General’s Token had vanished from his inventory after its single use—without it, there was no way to open a new portal back to this world. Without Shatterstar, he might never have found a path to Earth again.
The thought chilled him, but only for a moment. He remembered the journey that had brought him here: his descent into the Sea of Death, his passage into the Spirit Realm, his strange encounter with KH3106. None of it felt like coincidence. All of it bore the fingerprints of Morzan’s designs.
More than anything, though, he thought of the Quintessence Bone. It had come to him in that Spirit Realm, a relic of unimaginable weight. Morzan had said it was no ordinary treasure, but the legacy of a being beyond compare. He had even told Ethan that its very existence had been waiting for him.
And now, within Ethan’s body, the Quintessence Bone pulsed like a living heart, greedily devouring the power of the Ancestral Dragon’s Imperial Aura.