Querehsha, Monarch of Plagues and Queen of Insects.
She was beautiful and horrifying in equal measure—a feminine form that constantly shifted between human and insectoid features. Her skin was smooth and pale one moment, then covered in chitinous plates the next.
Her face was almost perfect—high cheekbones, full lips, large eyes—but those eyes had compound lenses that reflected light in disturbing patterns.
Querehsha's laugh was like the buzzing of a billion flies. "My, my, my... look what stumbled into our little web. The famous Aeon and his pets."
Her voice was seductive and nauseating simultaneously—like honey mixed with rot.
"Three little humans," she continued, her smile revealing too many teeth. "Coming to hunt Monarchs. How adorably suicidal. I'm going to enjoy peeling your skin off layer by layer. I'll plant my eggs in your still-living bodies and watch as my children devour you from the inside out. It will be exquisite."
Sillad raised one hand, and the frozen domain responded to his will. Ice formations throughout the forest began to glow with cold blue light.
"Since I couldn't contact Rakan and knew that Aeon—the one hunting Monarchs—would likely come for us next, I began preparations," Sillad explained calmly. "Querehsha and I coordinated. She brought her swarm. I fortified the dimensional barriers. And..."
He gestured upward with his other hand.
The pale sky above them darkened.
Not with clouds, but with bodies.
Dragons... Hundreds of them.
They filled the sky completely—massive creatures of scales and fangs and fire, each one radiating power that dwarfed normal monsters. These weren't the mana beasts from Rakan's domain. These were true dragons—ancient, intelligent, and utterly loyal to their master.
The smallest was the size of a building. The largest could have swallowed buildings whole.
"I borrowed some forces from Antares for this welcoming party," Sillad continued, "The Dragon Monarch was quite understanding when I explained the situation. He even enhanced the dimensional barriers around my domain with his own power."
The dragons roared in unison—a sound that shook the entire dimension to its foundations.
"No one can escape once they've entered," Sillad finished. "The barriers are locked from both sides now. So please, don't even think about running away. It would be... pointless."
Jean and Anna stared at the surrounding forces with wide eyes.
Hundreds of dragons in the sky. Millions of plague insects surrounding them on the ground. Two Monarchs working in perfect coordination. And dimensional barriers preventing escape or reinforcements.
This was different from fighting Rakan. That had been a one-on-one duel—Anna versus the Beast Monarch, with Ethan and Jean as backup. Even with Rakan's mana beasts in the domain, it had essentially been a controlled environment.
This? This was a full-scale military ambush.
'We've never faced this many enemies at once,' Jean thought, her mind racing through scenarios and finding very few positive outcomes. 'Never been completely surrounded like this. Even if we're strong individually...'
Anna's thoughts were similar. 'Rakan alone was manageable. But two Monarchs working together, plus hundreds of dragons, plus that insect swarm... and if Antares reinforced the barriers, he might show up himself any moment...'
They'd been confident before because the situations had been manageable. One Monarch, limited support, and Ethan always there as the ultimate safety net.
But this felt different. This felt genuinely dangerous.
Almost unconsciously, both Jean and Anna moved closer to Ethan, seeking the reassurance of his presence.
Seeing their nervous body language, both Sillad and Querehsha broke into laughter—Sillad's cold and controlled, Querehsha's manic and buzzing.
"Look at them!" Querehsha cackled, her arms gesturing excitedly. "The mighty monarch hunters, frightened like cornered rats! Oh, this is delicious! I'll make sure to kill you all in the most painful way possible. Days of agony, I promise. Weeks, if I'm feeling creative!"
"Indeed," Sillad agreed with his smile widening. "I borrowed these forces specifically for this moment. Every dragon here is equivalent or even higher than Tarnak level. My swarm of ice elementals is positioned throughout the domain. Querehsha's plague can dissolve flesh in seconds. And the dimensional barriers ensure you cannot simply flee when the battle turns against you."
His white eyes focused on Ethan specifically. "You are Aeon, correct? The one who somehow killed Tarnak and Yogumunt? I'm curious to see if you live up to the fear you've inspired."
Ethan had been silent throughout all of this. He'd stood calmly, his expression neutral, as the trap was revealed and the Monarchs gloated. He'd even been scanning the surrounding forces with interest, as if taking notes for later study.
But then something happened that made everything change.
He started laughing.
It began as a quiet chuckle—barely audible over the sound of dragon roars and insect buzzing. But it grew. And grew. Until Ethan was laughing fully—head thrown back, shoulders shaking, genuine mirth in his voice.
"Haha... Hahahaha... HAHAHAHAHA!"
The laughter was infectious in its intensity, but there was something unsettling about it. It wasn't nervous laughter. It wasn't fear manifesting as hysteria.
It was the laughter of someone who'd just heard the funniest joke of their life.
Sillad and Querehsha's laughter cut off abruptly. They stared at Ethan with confusion and growing unease.
"Has he lost his mind?" Querehsha asked, her smile faltering. "Did fear break his sanity already?"
"I... don't know," Sillad admitted as his mind is troubled by this unexpected response.
Jean and Anna, however, felt their fear evaporate instantly. They looked at each other, then sighed simultaneously—relief and exasperation mixing in equal measure.
'We were worried for nothing,' Jean thought before shaking her head at herself. 'Of course. How could we forget who we're standing next to?'
'Ethan Carter is here,' Anna reminded herself, her confidence flooding back. 'Aeon. The Hell-Breaker. The man who can level galaxies. Why the hell were we scared?'
Ethan's laughter slowly died down. He wiped a tear from his eye, his expression shifting from mirth to something far more dangerous.
His eyes—blue as distant stars—locked onto Sillad and Querehsha with absolute focus. His smile vanished completely, replaced by a look of such cold, terrible certainty that even the Monarchs felt a chill that had nothing to do with Sillad's frozen domain.
When Ethan spoke, his voice was quiet but carried across the entire dimension with perfect clarity, "Running?" He tilted his head slightly. "Who's running?"
A pause.
"Running where?"
Another pause which is heavier than the first.
"And... WHY?"
He shouted and the entire domain trembled.
Not from geological activity. Not from Sillad's power or the dragons' roars. It trembled because reality itself was responding to Ethan's presence as he stopped holding back.
Pressure crashed down on everything and everyone—an invisible force that made the air itself heavy, made breathing difficult, made existence feel like a burden.
Sillad and Querehsha's eyes widened in genuine shock. This pressure—this overwhelming sensation of standing before something infinite and terrible—was beyond anything they'd experienced.
'What... what is this...?' Sillad thought, his analytical mind struggling to comprehend the sheer magnitude of power being radiated.
'This isn't mana,' Querehsha realized with dawning horror. 'This is something else. Something worse.'
Ethan raised his hand and casually waved it downward in a simple gesture—like he was telling a dog to sit.
Every dragon in the sky—hundreds of them, each one a force of destruction—suddenly plummeted toward the ground as if they'd all been hit simultaneously by the gravity of a collapsing star.
CRASH! BOOM! CRASH! CRASH!
Dragons slammed into the frozen landscape with devastating force. The crystalline trees shattered like glass. Ice formations that had stood for millennia crumbled to powder. The ground itself cracked and buckled under the sheer mass of falling bodies.
Not one dragon remained airborne. All of them—every single one—lay pinned to the ground by Ethan's Genesis Telekinesis, unable to move, unable to even lift their heads. Some of the weaker ones had been knocked unconscious from the impact. The stronger ones could only roar in impotent fury as they struggled uselessly against the invisible force.
The pressure from Ethan only increased.
Blue energy began to emanate from his body—not magic, not mana, but pure Genesis power that made reality itself uncomfortable. The air around him shimmered and distorted as if unable to properly contain what he was.
Then, across the entire domain, something impossible appeared.
Blue circuits—like electrical wiring made visible, like circuitry from some cosmic computer—began manifesting throughout the dimension. They spread from Ethan's position like veins growing through flesh, covering the ground, climbing the ice formations, spreading across the sky itself.
The circuits pulsed with rhythmic light, each pulse synchronized perfectly with what might have been Ethan's heartbeat—if his heart still functioned like a normal human's, which it decidedly did not.
Within seconds, the entire domain was covered in this network of glowing blue lines. It looked like someone had overlaid a circuit diagram onto reality itself.
Sillad's expression transformed from confident superiority to absolute horror. His mind recognized what he was seeing, even if he didn't want to believe it.
'Those patterns... those aren't magic circles. Those aren't runes. Those are...'
Querehsha's face had gone pale beneath her chitinous plates. Her swarm of insects—usually perfectly controlled—began buzzing erratically, from being pinned down and also sensing their mistress's fear and responding to it.
"What... what is that...?" she whispered, her voice losing all its earlier seductive mockery.
Ethan took a single step forward.
The motion was casual, unhurried, but both Monarchs felt it like a physical blow. His presence was expanding, filling the entire dimension with suffocating certainty.
Sillad tried to raise his hands to cast a defensive spell—absolute zero barriers, frozen space, anything to protect himself.
Querehsha attempted to command her swarm to attack, to overwhelm this threat through sheer numbers.
Neither succeeded.
Ethan raised his right hand and closed it into a fist.
CRASH!
Both Monarchs were instantly seized by invisible force—Genesis Telekinesis that made Rakan's experience seem gentle by comparison. They were lifted into the air, completely immobilized, every muscle locked in place.
Then Ethan squeezed.
The pressure intensified dramatically. Both Sillad and Querehsha screamed—sounds of pure agony as they felt their bodies begin to compress. Ribs cracked. Internal organs shifted. Blood vessels burst.
Sillad vomited blood, the crimson liquid freezing instantly in his domain's cold air and falling like red hail. Querehsha's chitinous armor cracked and splintered, ichor leaking from the breaks.
Ethan's expression remained completely neutral—no anger, no satisfaction and no emotion at all. He simply looked at them the way a human might look at particularly noisy insects.
"You bugs are getting more noisy," he said, his voice carrying that same terrible calm. "I was playing with you for entertainment—letting you live because your struggle amused me, because hunting you one at a time made an interesting game."
His eyes glowed brighter, the blue becoming almost white with intensity.
"But playtime is over."
Jean and Anna watched with wide eyes as understanding finally clicked into place.
The blue circuits covering the domain. The specific pattern they formed. The way they pulsed with concentrated energy.
"He's using that spell," Anna breathed, recognition and awe mixing in her voice.
Jean nodded slowly, her mind immediately understanding the implications. "They irritated him. Really, genuinely irritated him."
That was the key difference. Ethan had been interested in Tarnak and Yogumunt—curious about their power and abilities, wanting to study them. He'd been entertained by Rakan's combat prowess, enjoying the show Anna put on.
But Sillad and Querehsha had crossed a line. They'd prepared this elaborate trap, surrounded him with armies, tried to intimidate his wives, and most importantly—they'd wasted his time with their arrogance when they can't even handle a portion of his true strength.
Ethan didn't get angry often. His personality was too easygoing, too genuinely unbothered by most things. But when something finally did trigger his irritation?
The response was absolute.
Jean and Anna moved closer to Ethan, positioning themselves slightly behind him. Not out of fear for themselves, but because they recognized what was about to happen and wanted to be in the safe zone.
Sillad and Querehsha, still held in Ethan's telekinetic grip, stared at the circuit patterns with growing terror. They couldn't sense mana from any of the three humans—but this strange energy radiating from the male was more terrifying than any magic they'd ever encountered.
This wasn't the power of a hunter. This wasn't even the power of a Ruler.
This was something else entirely. Something that made their Monarch authorities feel small and insignificant.
Ethan slowly raised his right hand toward the sky. The movement was deliberate, almost ritualistic.
The blue circuits throughout the domain responded immediately, their pulsing intensifying, the light growing brighter and brighter until it was almost painful to look at.
"I..." Ethan began, his voice resonating with power that made the dimension itself vibrate.
The dragons still pinned to the ground began to panic, thrashing uselessly against his telekinetic hold. The insect swarm tried to scattered in terror but couldn't. Even the frozen landscape started to crack and break apart.
"...Am..."
The circuits began to pulse more. Energy accumulated at impossible rates, drawn from the dimension itself, from the space between spaces, from the fundamental forces that held existence together.
Sillad's mind raced through every possible defense, every technique he'd learned in millennia of existence. Nothing would work. He knew that with absolute certainty. Whatever was coming, it would overwhelm everything.
Querehsha tried one last time to break free, pouring all her Monarch authority into the effort. Her power—which could dissolve armies, which could plague entire worlds—had absolutely no effect on Ethan's hold.
They were both going to die. They knew it with crystalline certainty.
Jean placed a hand on Ethan's shoulder—not to stop him, but in a gesture of support and solidarity.
Anna did the same from his other side, her expression serious for once.
Both of them knew what was coming. They'd seen Ethan use this spell exactly once before and understand it's power.
The circuits throughout Sillad's domain reached critical luminescence. Every dragon, every insect, every frozen tree, every particle of air—all of it was outlined in blue light.
Ethan's eyes blazed with power beyond comprehension as he spoke the final word, "...ATOMIC."
The entire domain was consumed by blue light.
...
Author's Note:
"Hi guys! How did you find this chapter? I'd really love to hear your thoughts and feedback."
"Also, I'm curious about your ideas regarding the Monarch powers. Which Monarch power do you think should go to which of Ethan's women? I already have a clear plan in mind, but I'd love to hear your interpretations and suggestions."
"Thanks a lot for reading, and I appreciate every single one of you."