Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan’s expression changed with everyone else’s.

He opened the system instantly and rescanned the spot Lily was staring at.

Sure enough—beneath that region, there was a strange, brutal power signature hiding down there.

But what grabbed Ethan’s attention wasn’t the power itself.

It was the other detail—

He’d scanned that place before.

And back then, the system had found nothing.

Which meant whatever was hiding underground could, at least to some extent, slip past the system’s scan.

That realization tightened something in Ethan’s chest more than the creature’s raw strength did.

And while everyone was still locked on that patch of ground—

It blew.

No warning. A violent surge of force punched up from the depths, and the earth detonated. The ground split and burst outward in a roaring collapse.

Then a howl of laughter rolled up from the fissure.

A moment later, a massive body rose slowly from the crack and lifted into the sky.

It was huge.

And heavy in a way that made the air feel thicker.

The instant it appeared, the energy currents around it began to roll outward. Worse—cradled in its hand was a gigantic sphere of energy.

Power churned inside that sphere, dense and oppressive. The destructive intent packed into it made Ethan’s chest tighten with nothing more than a glance.

Lily stared at it coldly. Her power spread at once, and white lightning began condensing again across the high sky.

"Gorathul." There was no trace of her earlier laziness now. "We escaped the Infernal Abyss together. I thought you died out there. I didn’t think you’d be hiding here."

She tipped her chin up slightly, voice turning fully frigid.

"Since we ran into each other today, don’t blame me for being rude. Hand over your core energy."

The massive figure across from her only laughed harder.

In that laughter, the energy sphere in its grasp kept changing shape—stretching long, splitting apart, then merging again—like it could reconfigure into any attack pattern at any moment and carpet the entire sky.

"You little brat." Gorathul’s voice was soaked in hatred and mockery. "If it weren’t for you, I’d still be in the Infernal Abyss—safe and comfortable as a lord."

Power surged off him in rolling layers, his aura growing heavier by the second.

"Instead, I’ve been forced to hide here like a stray dog."

Then his voice dropped, crushingly cold.

"Today, I’m going to make you pay."

Feeling the power flooding the heavens, Ethan’s face sank.

This wasn’t a level he could interfere with.

So he immediately led everyone back again, clearing out the entire zone directly beneath the sky above them.

Because he knew: at this energy tier, a direct clash didn’t need to hit you to kill you.

A stray shockwave would turn them into paste.

In the next instant, Lily’s power and Gorathul’s power collided head-on.

Space itself twisted and began to crumble almost the moment they touched. Cracks erupted from the impact point and spread like madness, and the sky looked like it was being torn open by bare hands.

Lily didn’t give an inch.

With a single lift of her hand, she forcibly condensed a massive sphere of lightning energy between heaven and earth—then hurled it out.

The surface of that sphere boiled with rolling white thunder. And at its core, wrapped tight inside, was a bird-shaped phantom so clear it looked almost real.

Gorathul narrowed his eyes.

He clearly hadn’t expected Lily’s strike to come that fast—or that cleanly.

But his response was just as quick. Power erupted through him in an instant. The energy he’d been holding in his palm compressed violently, then—on the next beat—a gigantic Energy Greatsword condensed into his grasp.

It wasn’t a simple energy weapon.

The blade was massively wide, but its edge was terrifyingly thin. Layer after layer of compressed destructive force churned inside it like a caged storm.

The moment it formed, the surrounding space let out a series of deep, ripping groans—like even the world couldn’t handle its weight.

Gorathul charged.

His speed was absurd. That huge body didn’t slow him down at all. If anything, the sheer, brutal explosiveness made him feel like a sideways-moving catastrophe.

He brought the Energy Greatsword down in a clean, frontal cut—straight into the massive lightning sphere Lily had thrown.

At the moment of contact, the bird-shaped phantom at the center shuddered violently—then was cleaved apart under the blade.

A split second later, the entire lightning sphere burst from the middle. White arcs whipped outward in a wild roll, bleaching the sky in a harsh, blinding glare.

Lily didn’t retreat.

The instant her attack was broken, she was already moving forward again.

Gorathul didn’t pause either. He kept driving in with the sword, relentless.

The next moment, their bodies met head-on in the high sky.

Clang!

Then came a storm of impacts.

The sound wasn’t sharp—it was heavy, suffocating, like countless sledgehammers colliding again and again in midair.

They fought at point-blank range, smashing into each other, power flipping outward in layers. Every exchange made the surrounding space buckle inward for a heartbeat—then explode outward in a violent recoil.

Cracks opened one after another across the sky. The people watching below struggled more and more to even track their movements.

They were too fast.

Too strong.

Even Valtheron, standing far off, could feel the pressure rolling over him. He could still endure it, but his body had tightened into a strained, near-limit stance.

As for everyone farther away—just catching the edge of the aftershock was enough to drain color from their faces.

Ethan’s heart sank. He was just about to order another withdrawal—

When the ground beneath them started to shake.

Not a small tremor. The entire region rumbled at once, deep and continuous, like something immense was turning over under the earth.

Then figures started bursting out of the ground—one after another—like they’d been hidden deeper down for a long time, waiting for this exact moment to swarm out together.

"Follow Lord Gorathul—kill them!"

The moment the roar went up, Ethan’s eyes changed.

He truly hadn’t expected a massive army to still be hidden in a place like this.

The enemies pouring out were packed with killing intent. The power rolling off them was intense too—these weren’t slapped-together stragglers. They moved like a force that had been prepared.

There was no time to think.

Ethan lifted a hand and ordered an immediate countercharge.

Then he went first.

White lightning detonated across the surface of his Powered Combat Armor. He became a spear of thunder diving from the sky, slamming straight into the crowd.

On impact, a whole cluster of enemies was thrown back. Then Ethan was already moving—rapid, precise kills chained together without wasted motion.

Their power was strong, but their bodies were noticeably brittle.

If you could find the weak point, killing them didn’t take much extra cost at all.

The problem was that those weak points were insanely hard to spot.

Ethan could lean on the system’s scans, lock onto the fatal points instantly, and carve through them at a frightening pace.

Everyone else didn’t have that luxury. They had to tank hits while testing, reading reactions, relying on experience and instinct to guess.

So the moment the fighting started, it went straight to boiling.

The enemies coming from underground didn’t seem to have an end. They kept spilling out—wave after wave.

And worse still, as time went on, the ones coming later were stronger than the ones before.

Stronger.

More vicious.

And terrifyingly relentless.