books44 Chapter 1174: Hell Becomes a Mine
Chapter 1174: Hell Becomes a Mine
Ethan stood in the shattered void and let out a slow breath.
With the soul dealt with, the body outside had lost its owner completely. He didn’t linger. His consciousness withdrew from the sea of consciousness, and his body broke down into particles again, bursting out from within the minotaur.
Black grains swirled in midair, then reassembled into Ethan’s body.
And the minotaur’s physical shell... was now fully under his control.
He had to admit, the amount of power stored in this guy was insane.
Not just multiple elemental forces—there was also an extremely unusual Primordial Core from The Infernal Abyss.
That Primordial Core was hidden deep inside the blood-red gemstone in the minotaur’s chest. Together with Earth Magic and Infernal Primordial Power, it sustained the minotaur’s bloodline ability.
There was no way Ethan was letting that kind of gain slip through his fingers.
He lifted his hand and pressed it to the minotaur’s chest. Translucent lightning stabbed in through his palm and sank into the blood-red gemstone. Cracks spread across the gem’s surface, and the Primordial Core inside was forcibly dragged out.
The moment the Primordial Core left the body, the minotaur’s flesh lost all luster. That huge frame dropped from the air and crashed down between the mountains.
Ethan, meanwhile, drove the Primordial Core straight into his own body.
The heavy Infernal Primordial Power rushed in, then spread deep along his energy channels.
Ethan’s body couldn’t absorb that much Primordial Force in one shot. Most of it, the instant it entered him, was quickly pulled away and absorbed by Lily deeper inside—leaving only a small portion to settle into Ethan’s own core.
Even so, his aura steadied noticeably.
Once the minotaur was handled, Ethan immediately opened the system and began scanning the surrounding mountain terrain and the underground energy-ore structure.
Streams of data surfaced in rapid succession.
Beneath the Morgrath range, the mineral veins were packed like a web, and the energy distribution was far more complex than anything you could tell from the surface.
The system swept along the mountain fissures, the tokens’ guidance, and the fault lines created by the recent fight. After confirming there were no new enemies lurking nearby, Ethan finally raised his hand and gave the order.
"Start mining."
Emerald Castle’s forces moved at once.
The goblin engineering teams rushed for the fissures with their detection equipment. Powered combat armor units sealed off the sky. Fallen Star Guard locked down the mining zone.
The tokens they’d just fought over were gathered and sent to the rear, and they were quickly used to pinpoint underground vein entrances.
Morgrath’s ore resources began getting marked out, batch by batch.
Ethan hovered in midair, sweeping his gaze across the area—then something occurred to him.
He pulled out a token from his gear.
Its surface was carved with spatial patterns. It was the one Korvath had given him earlier.
Ethan stared at it for a beat, then flicked his wrist and hurled the token into the empty air beside him.
The instant it struck space, every pattern on its surface lit up.
The void rippled like it had been unlocked by a key. First, a thin slit opened—then it rapidly expanded into a massive spatial passage. Light stabilized along the edges, and the energy flow inside was clean and orderly, without the chaotic tearing sensation of a normal space rift.
Ethan stopped in front of the passage and looked through.
On the other side was a small world overflowing with energy.
The moment the passage opened, a wave of power he’d never felt before slammed straight into him.
It poured through the edge of the corridor, carrying mineral-vein aura so dense it was almost tangible. When it hit his body, even his blood seemed to surge in response.
Translucent lightning quivered faintly inside his meridians, and the few strands of Primordial Force he’d just absorbed reacted as well.
There was no doubt about it.
The far end of the passage truly led to a small world rich with energy beyond measure.
Before Ethan could get a proper look, a figure sprang out of the passage.
Korvath landed on the rocky ground of the Morgrath range. The first thing he did was look straight at Ethan, panic practically spilling off his face.
"I knew you’d open the spatial passage!"
His words came fast, like he’d been waiting on the other side for a long time.
"So I stayed there guarding it. Hurry—come with me. This place is way too dangerous!"
And then Korvath’s voice stopped.
He finally took in the scene around him.
In his head, Ethan and Emerald Castle’s army were supposed to be barely hanging on in Morgrath—maybe already driven to the brink by this so-called purgatory.
But the people standing in front of him now didn’t look defeated in the slightest.
They looked... thrilled.
Fallen Star Guard members were hauling chunks of energy ore in their arms. The goblin engineering teams were carrying basket after basket of crystals toward a temporary storage array. When the powered combat armor soldiers rose out of the mountain fissures, they were dragging freshly mined vein-cores behind them like trophies.
Everyone had something in their hands.
Everyone looked like they’d just done a lap through a treasury and robbed it blind.
Korvath opened his mouth.
No second sentence came out.
Ethan casually grabbed a piece of golden ore and tossed it at him.
Korvath caught it on instinct. The moment it hit his palm, the weight sank in—not physical weight, but the heavy thrum of energy inside the ore. He glanced down, and his expression stiffened even more.
"We’ve already taken this place completely," Ethan said, calm like he was stating the obvious.
"From now on, every mineral resource here belongs to us. But there’s too much. I’m going to need to borrow some of your people to haul it over."
Korvath’s mouth slowly fell open.
He knew Ethan was strong. He knew Emerald Castle’s army was no joke.
But he’d never imagined this expedition force could take Morgrath in such a short time.
He’d called this place an endless hell.
In Ethan’s hands, it had turned into an open mine.
Ethan didn’t give him much time to process.
He immediately gave the order for Emerald Castle’s troops to start moving everything they’d gathered—ore, energy cores, and all kinds of vein resources—through the spatial passage.
The goblin engineers quickly replotted the transport routes, reinforcing the edge of the corridor into a temporary shipping gate. Squad after squad marched in with storage gear and transport arrays, flowing into the passage in steady lines.
Korvath finally snapped out of it. He didn’t dare waste a second.
He relayed the command back through the corridor, calling out every person he could mobilize in the small city. Before long, the city side organized reception teams, pulling batch after batch of Morgrath ore into the streets and storehouses.
As more and more resources poured in, the air inside the city started to change.
The small city already had extremely rich mineral resources buried beneath it. Now Morgrath’s high-density deposits were being added on top. Two completely different vein forces piled into the same space, and it didn’t take long before something strange began to happen.
A faint layer of luminous dust appeared in the air.
It wasn’t blinding. It didn’t feel oppressive, either. If anything, it flowed with a gentle, warm current.
The motes drifted slowly through the streets, along the walls, over the ground. And whenever they brushed against a person, they seeped in through the skin—quietly slipping into the body as if they’d been waiting for the chance.