I am not sure if this will help anyone figure out anything, but here is a
report of what happened a while ago when we went back to the ethereal plane
a second time:

We appeared in a different place the second time. We were still in the
ethereal plane, and the hordes of Astral Guardians and banshee, etc. were
still there, but we were inside a room fenced in by a ring of skulls and
zodiac signs. It looked just liked the zodiac rooms, only there was open
space outside the walls and tons of creatures outside unable to get to us.
Inside this fenced in area there were lots of banshees and the Sword
Gaurdian. We defeated the Sword Gaurdian and I picked up the chest again.
This time the chest had an Ethereal Box inside it. When I used the box it
opened and the ethereal sword was inside. When i armed the sword it once
again gave the message "You feel the Ethereal sword guiding your arm" I
tried to use the ethereal sword this time while I was still in the ethereal
plane, but i simply got the message "The mysteries of the Ethereal Sword are
beyond your comprehension" which is the same message I got when i did a
"/useitem ethereal ?". At that point I handed the sword to kojiro so that
he could try it out. We then begand to study the room we were in. We
decided that since it was another zodiac room then mabe if we went through
the same route that we used to get to the ethereal plane it would lead us
elsewhere. The crystal shattered not long after we ha entered the ethereal
plane. Perhaps if we can /use it next time before it explodes it might tell
us something, but i think it is probably only a method of getting to the
ethereal plane, not something to be used there. The first zodiac in the
route was the pig, and when we went through the pig we appeared in
purgatory.

We tried to go back to the Ethereal Plane again, but this time alot of
people didnt take the full route through the zodiac rooms (they took a short
cut and the full route group caught up with them and so alot of people didnt
go in all the zodiacs). The people that didnt take the full route ended up
in just another zodiac room in TK, while those who took the full route ended
up back in the same place in the Ethereal Plane and fell before they could
do anything. I dont know where we will end up next time we go but i do plan
to go back there.

Kojiro handed me the sword before he went to the library and i handed it
around to some people to experiment with. According to our experiments, the
blade is not quite as amazing as first thought. It does not give infinite
atkus, it just gives a very large bonus (like 40-50 atkus) and it improves
balance alot too. It is still a very fine blade, just not one with infinite
atkus 8D

Gurgi