Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 997: Beyond the System

Ethan's Powered Combat Armor immediately kicked into overload. Complex energy lines spread out from around his body, drawing the ore's power out thread by thread and guiding it into place.

The ore began to glow.

One chunk after another activated. Pale-blue energy patterns raced across the ground, spreading into a massive array network. As the energy gathered, a thick spatial barrier gradually took shape over the mine.

It wasn't a simple wall of force.

The structure was incredibly complex—dozens of energy channels braided together, continuously fed by the ore's steady output. From a distance, the entire mining range looked like it had been sealed inside a huge, transparent crystal.

Not long after the barrier stabilized—

The sky darkened.

From the direction of the Dark Abyss, a pitch-black mass was closing in fast. Dense swarms of flying creatures and abyss troops spread across the sky like a moving storm.

Zerathrax had arrived.

When the massive roach-man appeared at the head of the formation, the air seemed to congeal. His compound eyes flashed with icy, blood-red light. The pressure coming off him was even more terrifying than before—rage had clearly pushed his power fully out.

"This is the place," he said quietly.

When Zerathrax spotted the mine protected by the barrier, the anger in his eyes practically ignited. He'd clearly realized Ethan and the others were inside.

No hesitation.

"Attack!"

The instant the order fell, the entire Dark Abyss force struck together.

Countless attacks converged in the sky—black, dark-red, and deep-purple energy beams slamming into the spatial barrier in rapid succession.

The first impact only made the barrier tremble slightly.

But the second, the third—one after another—

Cracks began to appear across its surface.

They spread like a spiderweb, thin lines crawling across the transparent wall. Every time another strike landed, the cracks extended farther.

If this kept up—

The mine would be breached sooner or later.

Ethan stood inside the barrier, breathing faster. He could clearly feel the terrifying presences outside. Every bombardment carried massive abyss energy.

"With what we've got right now… we can't hold," he muttered.

The Powered Combat Armor's system returned a blunt assessment—

If the enemy kept pressing, the barrier would collapse in under ten minutes.

And then—

A completely different spatial fluctuation appeared.

It wasn't coming from the Dark Abyss. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

It came from inside the mine.

The air warped slightly. A rotating spatial vortex opened at the mine's center, widening by the second.

Ethan snapped his head around.

As the vortex spun larger, silhouettes began to form inside it.

They stepped out one after another—fully equipped, disciplined, and powerful.

Reinforcements.

The moment Ethan saw them, the steel-tight tension in his nerves finally eased a notch. He rushed forward and, right at the front, wrapped Lily in a hard hug as she came through.

"Thank god," he breathed out, genuinely relieved. "If you'd gotten here any later, I was about to get wiped by these assholes."

Lily looked deadpan in his arms.

She rolled her eyes and pushed Ethan off with a light shove, her expression openly unimpressed.

"This is what scared you?" She lifted her chin toward Zerathrax in the sky, pure disdain in her voice. "Pathetic."

She pointed at the giant roach-man.

"It's just a cockroach."

After saying that, she rolled her shoulders like she was about to do a casual warm-up.

"You stay here and watch," Lily said flatly. "I'll handle him."

The next second, her aura changed.

White lightning erupted around her in a violent surge. Savage current spread from her feet in expanding waves, tearing through the air. The entire sky flashed white.

Her body rose slowly.

As she climbed, thunder gathered around her like it had been waiting. Lightning spun through the clouds like a storm, huge arcs interlacing—until it looked like a sea made entirely of thunder had formed around her.

Zerathrax's compound eyes tightened the moment he saw it.

He clearly hadn't expected Ethan's group to have someone this strong hidden in their pocket.

The pressure in the air spiked.

Zerathrax drew in a hard breath. Power surged and condensed into his right palm. Dark-red abyss energy compressed tighter and tighter until it formed a blood-red sphere about the size of a fist.

It didn't look big.

But the energy packed inside it was terrifying.

And it wasn't just ordinary power.

It was laced with an extremely dense aura from The Infernal Abyss.

If it detonated, the entire area would be wiped clean.

"Die!"

Zerathrax whipped his arm and hurled the blood-red sphere up into the sky.

At the same time, Lily finished gathering her attack.

The white lightning around her compressed in seconds into a massive swirling vortex. Then the vortex shifted shape—thunder sketching an enormous outline in midair.

A lightning phoenix.

It was made of pure thunder. When it spread its wings, it covered half the sky. Every feather flashed with blinding electric light, lightning raging through its body like blood through veins.

The next instant—

The lightning phoenix dove.

The blood-red sphere rocketed up.

The two forces smashed together in midair.

The shockwave from the explosion swept across the entire mining range in an instant. The air boomed so loud it felt like it punched straight through bone. An energy storm burst outward, and twisted裂 seams appeared across the sky.

Space itself looked like it was being torn open.

Cracks spread rapidly between heaven and earth.

The energy storm overhead kept expanding.

Even after the lightning phoenix and the blood-red sphere's collision, the aftershock still hadn't faded. A warped layer of turbulent energy flow covered the sky above the mine.

Thunder and abyss aura continued to collide, sending out a low, constant roar—like two invisible seas chewing into each other.

Ethan stood at the edge of the mining range, eyes locked on Lily floating in the sky.

And in that moment, something hit him.

He opened the system interface fast.

A pale-blue scan beam unfolded across his vision. The system's analysis module immediately locked onto Lily.

Data streams scrolled across his retinal display as complex routines tried to parse the energy structure inside her.

But a few seconds later—

The interface froze.

The scan result showed only a single blurred line:

[Target energy level exceeds current system parsing range]

Ethan blinked.

The system had never given him a result like that before. In the past, no matter how strong the enemy was, it could always at least spit out a rough tier estimate.

But now—

It couldn't even display basic data.