Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan stared at the ground as it split wider and wider, his brow knitting tighter by the second.

The next moment, he shot up into the air. He pressed both hands down in front of his chest, rapidly condensing a massive sphere of lightning, then slammed it hard into one of the main openings below.

Boom!

The whole stretch of earth bucked upward as if it had been flipped.

That tunnel mouth collapsed in on itself, and scorched black cracks spiderwebbed out in every direction.

But what made Ethan’s expression darken even more was this—

The army down there didn’t hesitate. They didn’t back off in the slightest.

They kept ramming the entrance even after he’d smashed it into a sinkhole.

And off to the other side, farther out, a brand-new fissure had been dug open by sheer force.

Not one. Not two.

Dozens.

In the blink of an eye, more enemy troops were leaping out of those fresh holes, pouring onto the battlefield like a flood.

Ethan could only look on, helpless.

He honestly hadn’t expected them to be this stubborn—this fanatical. Like a pack of lunatics who didn’t care about casualties at all.

Higher up, the fight between Lily and Gorathul had completely gone off the rails.

They weren’t trading long-range blasts anymore. They were crashing into each other head-on, again and again. Every impact tore a huge rip through the space around them.

From those rifts, chaotic dimensional turbulence burst out nonstop—shapeless, borderless blades and storms that fanned out in all directions.

Even though Ethan had already pulled his troops back as far as he could, the power spilling out of that warped space was too violent. There was no way to dodge it cleanly. If even a single strand truly came down, the soldiers below would be shredded on the spot.

At this point, he couldn’t afford to be stingy anymore.

Ethan immediately hauled out every energy core he had on him, both hands moving without pause as he compressed, guided, and fused the power together.

Before long, he forced a gigantic energy barrier into existence, expanding it until it covered every last soldier on Emerald Castle’s side like a dome.

With that, their line finally stabilized—at least for the moment.

But the enemy army still surging up from underground...

They were completely exposed to the killing range of that dimensional turbulence.

The result was immediate.

It didn’t take long before nearly half of them were caught and minced into bloody pieces right where they stood.

Severed limbs, bursting blood mist, shredded armor—chunks of it all got flung up into the sky, then swept away by the aftershocks above. The battlefield turned so brutal it almost stopped feeling real.

This method really could chew through the enemy’s numbers fast.

But the price was just as obvious.

The energy cores in Ethan’s hands were draining way too quickly. The larger the barrier, the more dimensional impacts it had to tank—and the more terrifying the energy loss became.

If it kept going at this pace, his reserves would hit empty before long.

Just as his stomach sank, a piercing, agonized scream tore through the sky.

Ethan snapped his head up.

Gorathul’s body was thrown backward—straight back—like he’d been hit by something he couldn’t brace against.

Ethan’s eyes lit up in an instant.

Looks like Lily’s starting to gain the upper hand.

But that flash of excitement hadn’t even had time to spread before—

In the next moment, Lily coughed up a mouthful of blood in midair.

It wasn’t much, but at their level of combat, it stood out like a flare.

Clearly, that last head-on collision had left her badly wounded, too.

Ethan didn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat. He shot toward her.

He floated up beside Lily and, with a quick motion, pulled several high-tier energy cores from his gear and shoved them toward her.

But before he could even start guiding the power to treat her injuries, Lily suddenly turned and grabbed his shoulder.

In the next instant, her body dissolved into a streak of light and slipped straight into Ethan.

Ethan went rigid.

He genuinely hadn’t expected Lily to do it so cleanly—no warning, no buildup—just like that, taking his body again.

But this wasn’t the time to argue about it. Not now. At this point, maybe the only way they had any chance of keeping up with Gorathul was for the two of them to merge again.

So Ethan immediately prepared to fully open the power inside him, to let her overlap with him on a deeper level.

Then Lily’s voice rang out inside his mind.

"Bring the three little girls here. Now."

Fast. Cool. All business.

"Only if we gather all of our power together can we beat him."

Ethan didn’t question it. He called Idra, Auri, and Nysera over at once.

The next moment, three distinct forces surged toward him. None of them slowed down. They fused directly into Ethan’s body.

This wasn’t a simple stacking of energy.

It felt like several independent, perfectly compatible lives—separate, complete on their own—being forcibly spliced into something bigger. Something fuller. Something terrifyingly whole.

And then—

The violent power detonated outward.

The atmosphere in the high sky changed in a single breath.

If Ethan before had been merely strong, then Ethan now had stepped into a realm he’d never reached, not even once. The instant that power unfurled, all the raging turbulence around them seemed to go still for a beat, like even the chaos had to take a step back.

Gorathul saw it, and his eyes widened.

He clearly hadn’t expected Lily to have something like this in reserve.

But the shock only lasted a moment. He steadied his breathing almost immediately.

In the next instant, he spread layer after layer of terrifying energy around himself and pressed it down on Ethan. It came like a collapsing sky—packed with an unmistakable hunger to devour and destroy, crushing space itself until it folded inward, one layer at a time.

What truly changed Gorathul’s expression, though, was—

The moment that power neared Ethan, it stopped.

It didn’t advance.

It didn’t expand.

As if what stood in front of it wasn’t a man, but a line no force could cross.

Now, with Lily, Idra, Auri, and Nysera fused into him, Ethan had climbed to a height even he had never truly touched.

He didn’t even bother with anything extra. He simply raised a finger and lightly tapped the air in front of him.

In the next moment, that savage power rolled out.

The terrifying energy Gorathul had just laid down shattered on the spot.