Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 1000: The Core That Shouldn’t Exist

Ethan’s pupils snapped tight.

That power was way too big.

He knew that if he took it head-on, even the Powered Combat Armor might not hold.

So he didn’t try to tank it.

His figure flickered in midair. Lightning popped under his feet as he changed angles fast, skimming the edge of the energy storm and constantly repositioning.

At the same time, his counterattack was already moving.

White thunder gathered in his palm, compressed into a blazing lightning spear. He whipped his arm, and the spear shot out like a meteor, smashing toward the monster’s body.

Energy collided again and again in the sky.

Right when the standoff hit its most brutal point—

A second force entered the field.

Feylora rose into the air.

She hovered above the battlefield, her long hair lifting in the energy currents. The leftover power in the mine was drawn to her again, countless streams of golden light converging around her.

A few seconds later, a massive golden bow formed in her hands.

No hesitation.

All the energy piled into the arrow.

The bolt grew brighter and brighter, like a star catching fire. The air around it twisted, and space itself showed faint signs of collapse.

Then—

Feylora released the string.

The golden arrow screamed out.

It tore through the sky with crushing pressure, flying straight at the monster.

The creature sensed the danger.

Its wings snapped inward. The gemstones embedded across its body flared at once, and a thick energy barrier formed around it in an instant.

But the problem was already obvious.

Its clash with Ethan had drained a lot of its power. Now, facing Feylora’s full-force shot, it was clearly caught off guard.

Its aura wavered.

Energy flow inside the gemstones turned chaotic. Its internal core even let out a harsh zzzt—like a machine on the verge of overload.

And right in front of it—

That golden arrow was already there.

The moment Feylora’s shot landed, the entire energy balance in the sky snapped.

The monster had been barely holding a standoff with Ethan using the gemstone power on its surface, but that golden arrow hit its defense like a sledgehammer.

The barrier shook violently. Energy links between the gemstones scrambled, and the air filled with tiny, piercing zzzt sounds.

Ethan saw the opening instantly.

No hesitation.

Power detonated inside him. White lightning poured off his body like a released flood, gathering rapidly overhead.

A few seconds later, a massive white lightning orb formed in midair.

It spun hard, thunder compressing inside it until the air screamed. Space around it warped faintly. When the compression hit its limit, Ethan slashed his hand down.

The lightning orb dropped like a falling star, smashing into the monster.

BOOM—!

Blinding white light erupted.

The already-unstable barrier shattered completely, broken energy spraying outward like shattered glass. At the same time, the blood-red gemstones’ output was forcibly interrupted.

In that same instant, Ethan changed again.

Black patterns raced across his skin. Then his body broke apart entirely. Countless tiny black particles separated from him, forming a huge storm-cloud of grains in the air.

That black swarm surged toward the monster.

Like a dark tide, it poured into the ruptured energy structure and drilled inside.

During the earlier fight, Ethan had already scanned the creature’s data structure through the system. He knew its real strength wasn’t fancy control—it was that body, reinforced by abyss power.

If he tried to smash it from the outside—

He’d never fully break through.

The only way was to collapse it from within.

The black particles quickly seeped into the monster’s interior.

Ethan’s consciousness rode those particles as they spread. He could clearly sense the internal structure of that massive body. Violent energy churned through flesh like a storm—and at the absolute center of it all—

Was an enormous, crystalline energy core.

It hovered deep in the creature’s chest cavity, like a sun pinned inside its ribs.

In the next instant, the black particles surged and reconverged near the core.

Ethan’s shape re-formed inside.

He reached out.

No hesitation.

His fingers clamped down on the huge crystal core.

"K—crack."

A clean, brittle fracture rang out from inside the monster.

The energy core was ripped out of its structure by brute force.

In that moment, the creature’s internal energy circulation collapsed completely. The stable power source snapped, and all its abyss energy lost control at once.

Outside, Feylora was already using her absorption at full tilt.

Energy from the mine—and the power spilling out of the monster—was devoured continuously. The second it left the creature’s body, it was yanked away and swallowed.

The monster began to wither at a visible pace.

Flesh lost its support and split like dead wood. Within seconds, that huge frame was reduced to a cracked, dried shell.

Then—

It turned to ash.

Ethan reappeared from the fading energy storm.

The core was in his hand.

He exhaled, long and slow.

But his expression tightened again almost immediately.

The aura coming off the core was wrong.

The instant he gripped it, a sharp pain stabbed into his palm. It felt like countless tiny blades sawing into flesh, the energy inside the core trying to corrode him from the inside out.

Ethan steadied his breathing.

He condensed spatial energy fast, building a small spherical pocket in his palm. The transparent "cage" wrapped around the core completely.

Even so—

That power kept seeping through.

Ethan was still figuring out how to handle it when Feylora stepped up beside him.

She didn’t hesitate.

Her hand went straight onto the surface of the spatial sphere.

Ethan’s nerves spiked.

"Wait—"

Too late.

The core’s energy reacted like it had found a stronger gravity well. It began pouring into Feylora. Not just ordinary power—mixed inside was heavy infernal force, plus an eerily twisted void energy.

Absorbing a blend like that by force—

Should’ve shattered a body.

Ethan grabbed Feylora’s shoulder immediately.

At the same time, he pushed his own energy into her, trying to stabilize the flow and keep those violent currents from ripping her apart.

What happened next made him go still.

The moment that rampaging energy entered Feylora’s system, it calmed—fast. Like a wild beast that had been leashed. It stopped slamming around and instead settled quietly into her energy structure.

It even—

Felt docile.

Ethan’s hand froze midair.

For the first time, real shock showed on his face.

He’d never seen anyone absorb power at this level so easily.

A few minutes later, the entire core was gone.

Every last trace of it had been devoured by Feylora.

Ethan hadn’t even gotten a word out when the sky shifted again.

Something tore the distant cloud layer open.

Figures poured out of the high air.

A new army.

Dense silhouettes carpeted the sky, each one radiating an extremely strong aura. And what set Ethan’s instincts screaming was that the infernal energy inside them wasn’t isolated—

It linked.

Threads of power connected between bodies, forming a living network.

As their forces fused, something even larger—far more oppressive—began to take shape.