Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 1002: The Girl Who Stood

Ethan snapped his head up.

For a split second, his breathing caught.

From those vortices, figures poured out in steady streams—orderly, oppressive. This wasn’t some messy mob. It was an elite force with discipline in its bones, their auras unnervingly uniform.

And at the very front—

Stood something inhuman.

A gigantic cockroach-man.

Tall and warped, his carapace reflecting a dull, dark sheen. Every step he took made the air around him sag, like space itself couldn’t quite hold its shape.

Worst of all—

A pitch-black gemstone was set into his head.

It didn’t shine.

It didn’t glow.

It just felt like it swallowed everything.

Ethan’s gaze locked.

A pressure rolled off the thing that couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t just "strong." It was a crushing difference in rank—like being stared down by something that existed on a higher floor of reality.

Especially the energy waves pulsing from his chest—

Clear. Steady.

Tier 34.

Ethan’s heart sank.

He didn’t need time to calculate. On pure instinct, he knew this was beyond what Emerald Castle could take head-on right now.

But the battlefield didn’t wait.

"Full retreat!"

His voice snapped across the field.

The order had barely left his mouth when the cockroach-man lifted a hand.

Horrific power condensed in his palm.

Space ripped open.

A massive gash split the sky like an abyss gate forced wide, black energy pouring out in a waterfall. Even the mine in the distance began to shudder under the pressure.

Then his voice came, low and cold—like it didn’t belong to anything alive.

"I am Nexaris’s new emperor—Zerathrax."

The name hit like a weight.

"You killed my father, and you still dared to try to take this place."

His gaze swept slowly over the entire battlefield.

"Today, everyone here—"

"Not one of you is leaving."

The instant he finished, his power erupted fully.

High above, a gigantic phantom rapidly condensed—twisted and indistinct, formed from pure energy. Its outline was blurry, but the pressure it carried was suffocating.

It fell from the sky with the momentum of annihilation, slamming straight toward Emerald Castle’s army.

Defense barriers flared up instantly.

They held for one breath—

"BOOM!"

The barriers shattered like glass.

The shockwave ripped outward. Soldiers were thrown in every direction. The formation collapsed on the spot.

And just as despair started to spread—

A figure rose.

Lily.

She floated up into the air, violent white lightning coiling around her body.

That thunder wasn’t just energy. It moved like something alive, prowling around her with a low, angry hum.

Her eyes locked onto Zerathrax.

No hesitation.

She casually tossed down two broken heads she’d been holding, then accelerated under the lightning’s wrap—turning into a white streak that shot straight at him.

Zerathrax’s pupils tightened slightly.

He clearly hadn’t expected anyone to charge him in this situation.

He gathered power fast.

A massive energy sphere formed in his hand, black and crimson braided together in layered densities until space itself began to cave in around it.

No hesitation.

He brought it down.

In that instant, it felt like the sky and earth were being pressed lower.

But—

Lily didn’t slow.

Her expression was calm to the point of cold.

She raised her palm.

White lightning gathered crazily into her hand, current compressing and compressing until it became a single, unbelievably dense point of power.

Next second—

Facing that enormous sphere head-on, she drove one palm strike forward.

When they met, there was no explosion.

Just a heavy, muffled thunk that you felt in your bones.

Then the massive energy sphere cracked from the center.

Fractures spread in a blink, and under everyone’s stunned stare—

It collapsed.

Completely.

Energy fragments scattered outward like a storm breaking loose.

For a heartbeat, the entire battlefield went silent.

No one had expected a girl who looked so ordinary to shatter that kind of attack head-on.

Lily didn’t give anyone time to process it.

Thunder gathered in her hand again.

White lightning burst from her like a raging flood and swept outward. The tearing force was vicious—instantly shredding more than a dozen Nexaris soldiers into pieces.

The air filled with leftover static and a fog of blood.

Zerathrax took a step back.

Just one.

But that single step said everything.

He steadied himself in midair. The contempt in his eyes vanished, replaced by a heaviness Ethan had never seen on him before. Zerathrax drew power again—this time deeper, denser, like it was being siphoned from a lower layer of space itself.

Watching from a distance, Ethan’s chest tightened.

That kind of power—

Was creeping right up to the edge of going out of control.

But Lily didn’t show the slightest hint of retreat.

She stood her ground with thunder circling her, like a walking storm-core.

She looked at Zerathrax, the corner of her mouth lifting. Her voice came out cold and razor-sharp.

"Something like you doesn’t even qualify as trash in my eyes."

Her gaze cut like a blade.

"And you’re calling yourself an emperor?"

She paused, and the mockery in her tone didn’t even try to hide the kill intent underneath.

"You’re not even worth your father’s shadow."

The air seemed to freeze solid.

And the power inside her—

Kept climbing.

Zerathrax’s breathing turned rough and fast.

He hovered high above, energy surging more violently in his chest. The pitch-black gemstone embedded in his head pulsed and swallowed light in slow gulps, like it was answering the rage that was starting to spill out of him.

A little girl—someone who looked utterly insignificant—had suppressed him in front of everyone.

The humiliation made his aura go feral.

The next moment, he stopped holding back.

He forced every last bit of power in his body to converge. Dark red and black energy tightened in from all directions, as if an invisible hand was crushing it down into his palm.

Then he slashed his arm down.

The force detonated outward at once, a sky-covering wave that drowned toward Lily.

The air tore.

Under that pressure, space let out a low, grieving groan—like the whole world was being pushed downward.

"You’re just a little girl, and you dare act arrogant in front of me," Zerathrax said, voice low and icy. "Let me show you what real power is."

Faced with an attack that nearly blanketed the entire sky, Lily only gave a soft, contemptuous snort.

She didn’t back up.

She didn’t even bother striking a defensive stance—like it wasn’t worth the effort.

Then her power shifted.

Beyond the violent white lightning, another energy surfaced—snow-white and pure to an extreme.

It wasn’t restless like thunder.

It carried an eerie stability and pressure, like something higher-ranking was descending in silence.

The two powers braided together inside her.

No conflict.

Instead, they formed a strange, perfect balance.

She raised her hand.

And for an instant, it felt like the world hit pause.

When the two forces truly collided, there wasn’t a huge explosion.

What spread out instead was a low, suffocating tearing sensation, crawling across space itself.

The area around the point of contact collapsed. Dozens of spatial vortices ripped open, and the turbulence pouring out was like countless razor blades, shredding anything it touched.

The sky turned fractured and broken.

And yet—

Lily and Zerathrax stayed where they were.

The space beneath them cracked, collapsed, and rebuilt over and over, but both figures remained steady as stone—like that world-ending destruction was nothing more than ripples in the wind to them.