After Noble Arkon departed, leaving behind a spiritual pressure that nearly crushed the slaves' bones, Ether did not relax. Instead, he squatted in the darkest corner of the abandoned sector and began focusing his newly acquired energy into his eyes. In his first life on Earth, he spent thousands of hours behind electron microscopes; in his second in Izguldur, he spent centuries dissecting the bodies of emperors. Now, these two worlds fused to create his unique "cheat": (The Spiritual Microscope).
"The human eye sees matter, the spectral eye sees energy, but my eye... it sees the voids and structures that bind them together," Ether thought as he scanned the tunnel.
He no longer saw stone or darkness; the world in his vision transformed into a transparent "anatomical map." When he focused on Overseer Paul, who stood in the distance berating the guards, his "cheat" manifested with terrifying clarity. Ether saw the Frost Raven fused into Paul's collarbone, but he didn't see it as a powerful phantom—he saw it as a machine with catastrophic failures.
"Paul thinks he is the master of the phantom, but my microscope sees the truth: there is a 'structural fracture' at the junction where the raven's beak meets the clavicle. Paul suffers from chronic pain, and he uses 30% of his energy just to numb the ache instead of strengthening his attacks. He isn't a warrior... he is a patient carrying a weapon that is eating him alive."
This was Ether's "cheat." He did not possess massive destructive energy to rival Rank 2, but he held the "Surgical Knowledge" of vital failure points. To him, Arkon and Paul were not gods; they were merely poorly designed "biological models."
"To reach Rank 1, I don't need to cultivate for years in this barren tomb. I need Paul's heart and his raven. I will use (Spectral Alchemy) to transform this raven from a parasite devouring its host into a 'Hybrid Phantom' that integrates into my nervous system with 100% compatibility."
His thoughts were interrupted by Kai, who approached him trembling. "Ether... Arkon... he is like a god. How can we even dream of escaping someone who sees everything?"
Ether looked at Kai coldly, his eyes still carrying the microscopic glint that analyzed Kai's exhausted joints.
"A god? How naive. Arkon is nothing but a barrel filled with unstable fuel. His 'Eye of Insight' has a lateral flow defect; it is blind to shadows moving at a specific frequency. He doesn't see everything... he only sees what he expects to see."
"He is just a man with better tools than us, Kai," Ether said in a calm, chilling voice. "And tools can be stolen... or shattered from within."
Ether began gathering parasitic plants growing in the mine's dampness, known as (Strangling Weed). To others, it was a deadly poison, but in Ether's alchemy, it was a "catalyst" that would make Paul's raven revolt against his nervous system tonight.