Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Valtheron’s power slammed down at the same time.

He didn’t give Zyraeth even the smallest chance to breathe.

Up in the high sky, that energy field—already unstable from being torn and twisted—was forcibly cinched tight again under Valtheron’s will. It condensed into an enormous sphere of power and smashed straight into the Void Creature that was still bound to Zyraeth’s soul.

The instant the energies touched, the entire sky lit up. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Blinding white light detonated from the point of impact, as if it erased every color in heaven and earth in one sweep, leaving only the purest, most violent shock.

Space above began collapsing in layers. Cracks crossed and spread, and at the edges, clouds, chaotic energy currents, and lingering battle intent were all dragged in and shredded.

Zyraeth’s body finally gave way in the collision.

This wasn’t "injury" anymore. It was the fused structure being ripped open from the inside.

The transparent Void Creature’s body split with huge tears first. Then those tears crawled deeper, yanking at what remained of Zyraeth’s soul and the stolen power holding him together, pulling everything to the brink.

A series of screams pierced the sky—each one sharper than the last—until even the distant fires of leftover energy burning across the plain seemed to tremble.

Right as his flesh and fusion structure were about to collapse completely, Zyraeth still forced out one final line.

"You outsiders—!"

His voice was drenched in venom and refusal, like he’d crushed the last of his will into it.

"Even if you kill me, you’ll never get true dominion over this world! The real core power... I already hid it!"

As the words fell, his body finally shattered.

High above, the transparent shell tied to his soul convulsed violently, then exploded from the inside. Energy fragments and severed soul remnants scattered into nothingness.

And that was when Ethan peeled himself out of it, piece by piece, reappearing in the open sky.

He hovered there, power pushed to the absolute limit.

When he’d invaded and activated black particulation, he hadn’t only destroyed Zyraeth’s fusion point. In the instant Zyraeth lost control, Ethan had forcibly absorbed that massive, chaotic power into his own body.

It was too dense.

Too huge.

It stretched him to the breaking point in a heartbeat.

If he didn’t vent it immediately—

He could explode at any second.

Down below, the Emerald Castle side saw the problem instantly.

Almost at the same time, figures shot upward, hovering around Ethan. Every one of them raised their power to the max, clearly preparing to work together and draw that overloaded energy out of him.

But before they could even get close, the world’s forces shifted again.

The energy surging around Ethan abruptly spiked. The near-out-of-control white lightning spread layer by layer across the sky, swallowing the whole dome of heaven.

Even stranger—

Ethan’s body, which should’ve been unstable from that swelling power, suddenly took on an eerie transformation. His aura shot higher. His form tightened, sharpened—like another will had clamped down and taken the wheel.

Then a familiar, jarring voice rang out.

"Well, damn. Didn’t think you’d end up with Primordial Force this rich, kid."

Lily.

The instant that voice appeared, everyone froze.

No one had expected Lily to wake up now—and it wasn’t just "waking up." She’d seized control at the exact moment Ethan’s power was about to spiral out.

But before anyone could process the shock—

A tearing boom roared from even deeper in the sky.

A massive dimensional rift was forced open overhead.

And from it, a transparent phantom beast—so huge it felt wrong—dropped down like a falling continent.

Its body was nearly fully see-through, but that only made it easier to see the truth inside: what churned within wasn’t normal energy at all, but a higher-grade, older, more dangerous core structure.

The moment it arrived, the atmosphere of the entire world changed.

Its pressure wasn’t just spatial distortion. Even people’s awareness felt squeezed under the weight of its existence.

Down below, a lot of soldiers lowered their heads the instant it descended, barely daring to breathe.

The phantom beast spoke slowly, voice so deep it felt like the world itself was speaking through it.

"I didn’t expect Elysion’s Overlord to change again."

It looked down at everyone. There wasn’t the slightest friendliness in its tone—only an instinctive dominance, like it was born above all things.

"If that’s the case, I’ll be the one to crown you."

It paused, and its voice turned colder.

"But from now on... you’ll all be my slaves."

It hadn’t even finished the sentence when Lily—inside Ethan—moved.

She didn’t give it the chance to say another word. She drove Ethan’s body straight upward.

In that instant, every strand of white lightning around Ethan detonated at once, carrying a pressure even purer—more tyrannical—than before, and it slammed head-on toward the transparent phantom beast.

Valtheron saw it—and for the first time, his face truly changed.

"Don’t!" he blurted, voice heavier than it had been at any point so far. "That’s the Primal Sovereign Beast—the living core of this world! Killing it is impossible!"

Lily didn’t care.

To everyone else, the Primal Sovereign Beast might’ve been the one existence in this world you couldn’t touch—the closest thing to the source itself.

But in her eyes, it clearly wasn’t untouchable.

It was a meal delivered right to her doorstep.

The next instant, she drove straight into the Primal Sovereign Beast’s body.

No circling.

No testing.

No hesitation.

The massive transparent form in the sky had only just begun a defensive contraction when Lily—carrying the violently overflowing power inside Ethan—rammed in from the inside and tore into it.

Then the entire high sky looked like it was being snapped in half by a giant hand.

Explosions blossomed one after another, vicious and continuous.

The Primal Sovereign Beast’s enormous body bulged... then split... and then its interior began to collapse in a chain reaction it couldn’t stop.

To anyone else, something like that should’ve been unkillable.

To Lily, it was just energy—dense enough, pure enough, high-grade enough.

In an absurdly short span of time, the Primal Sovereign Beast was blown into dust.

Not just "killed."

Its body and its core both broke apart, completely. World-level power poured out in a single flood—then, as if it had found a new home, it surged straight into Ethan.

Right after, Lily’s presence separated from Ethan for real, peeling free until she hovered alone between heaven and earth.

And now her aura was completely different.

This wasn’t a gradual climb.

It was a qualitative leap—what happened when you crossed a line you weren’t supposed to cross.

The power rolling off her was purer, more whole, and far more dangerous than before. When system scans and instinctive sensing swept over her, everyone arrived at the same conclusion almost at once—

Lily had reached Tier 35.

At the same time, the energy around Ethan finally stabilized.

That massive power that had almost blown him apart, after Lily’s intervention and the Primal Sovereign Beast’s collapse and redistribution, instead began to fuse with what he already had—layer by layer, slotting into place.

His Tier rose.

His overall energy density rose with it, pushing him into a new level entirely.

Even so, Valtheron—hovering nearby—went rigid.

He genuinely hadn’t expected the world’s true World Core Avatar to be killed like this.

Lily, on the other hand, looked almost blissful.

She floated lazily in midair, satisfaction written all over her face. Power radiated from her in endless waves, forcing the entire sky into the boundaries of her domain.

But while everyone was still trying to process the shock of what they’d just witnessed, Lily’s gaze suddenly darkened.

She looked down—straight into the depths beneath the earth.

The next instant, her aura locked onto a specific region below as if it had been pinned by an invisible nail.

"Gorathul!"

Her voice wasn’t particularly loud, yet it yanked everyone’s attention over in a single motion.

"How long are you going to hide?" Lily’s eyes narrowed. "Come out. Hand over your core energy."

The moment she said it, everyone in heaven and earth froze.

No one had expected that, with the battlefield already overturned like this, there was still a stronger existence lurking deep underground.

And what made it worse—what raised gooseflesh—was the fact that until now, not a single person had truly sensed it.