Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 999: The Monster Above

Ethan froze for a split second when he saw the result.

That man’s race—

Was a worm.

In most regions, that kind of creature was practically bottom-tier, usually so weak it barely counted as combat-capable. But in the Dark Abyss environment, worms could leverage special energy structures to get massively boosted.

The system flagged something else too—something crucial.

Worm-types shared a common weakness—

Their internal flesh structure was extremely fragile.

Ethan’s gaze sharpened instantly.

He drew a slow breath, then pulled his energy tight.

The next second, his body began to change.

Fine black patterns surfaced across his skin.

Then—

His whole body started to come apart.

Countless tiny black particles split away, spreading rapidly into the air until they formed a dense, black storm. In only a few seconds, Ethan completely lost his human shape.

What replaced him was a particle cloud spanning dozens of meters.

The black grains surged toward the battlefield like a tide.

They slipped past Feylora’s firing range in an instant, then closed in and swallowed the man whole. The man clearly sensed something wrong. He whipped his longsword around, trying to scatter the particles—

Too late.

The black particles drilled into him like countless microscopic parasites.

Ethan’s voice came from inside the cloud, cold and clear.

"Taking over your body—really isn’t hard at all."

In the next instant, every black particle erupted with power at the same time.

The man’s body jerked violently.

He could feel it—some foreign consciousness forcing its way inside him. The black particles spread through his flesh at terrifying speed, like an invisible net locking down every part of him.

"That’s impossible!"

Panic finally cracked through his voice.

"How did you do this? Why... why can you get inside my body?!"

He went berserk, dumping power to drive the intruders out. Abyss energy detonated inside him again and again, but every attempt felt like punching empty air.

Because—

His body was no longer entirely his.

Ethan’s will was taking it over, piece by piece.

The black particles kept spreading, dismantling the man’s structure from within. Bone, muscle, energy channels—everything was separated step by step, like a machine being disassembled with surgical precision.

Cracks appeared quickly.

Thin fissures spread across his skin, racing outward until they covered him like drought lines on dry earth.

He kept struggling.

It didn’t matter.

Ethan seized the opening.

Every particle detonated together.

THUD!

A muffled explosion burst in the center of the mine.

The man’s body collapsed in an instant, blown apart as a brutal shockwave rolled outward. Shredded flesh and broken energy structures scattered into the air as fragments.

And from the heart of that blast—

A figure shot out.

Ethan reformed his body. In his hand, he gripped a glowing energy core, still pounding violently—like a heart torn out by force.

The surrounding energy storm slowly faded.

And at the center of the battlefield, only Ethan remained, standing there in silence with that core in his fist.

Ethan stood firm in the center of the mining range, fingers clenched around the energy core he’d just ripped out.

The moment it hit his palm, he felt how abnormal it was. Inside the core, a scorching storm seemed to be compressed to the limit. Heat bled through the surface in steady pulses, enough to make his palm sting.

But it wasn’t normal heat.

It was pressure—something deeper, heavier.

He could sense the power inside still rotating slowly, like a tiny star that hadn’t fully stabilized yet. If that force ever got released all at once, the entire mining range would probably be flattened in a heartbeat.

Ethan took a breath and temporarily stowed the core in his equipment system.

When the others saw that, a lot of them unconsciously took a step back.

That enemy had already been terrifying—and Ethan had casually stripped his core in a direct fight. Whatever that technique was, it was way beyond what they’d expected.

But the fighting in the sky didn’t stop for that.

On the other side of the battlefield, Emerald Castle and the Dark Abyss legions were locked in a full-blown meat grinder.

Figures streaked through the air at high speed. Energy attacks kept detonating. Blinding light and abyss aura tangled together until the whole sky looked sick and broken.

Bodies fell constantly.

Powerless silhouettes dropped from above like shattered meteors, slamming into the ground and kicking up huge plumes of dust. Shockwaves from colliding forces kept rolling outward, one after another.

Space started to split.

The air trembled like fabric being torn. Around the mine, the edges of the space itself showed faint warped cracks.

Ethan steadied his breathing.

His body settled back into rhythm. Power began circulating again. White lightning gathered around him, fine arcs slithering through the air like snakes. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

He was about to dive back into the fight when—

The distant sky suddenly changed.

A massive shadow punched out from deep within the clouds.

It was a flying creature so huge it didn’t look real.

As its outline sharpened, everyone’s movements faltered for a heartbeat.

The thing was grotesque, like it had been stitched together from several completely different beasts.

Its head was that of a hawk, a sharp beak flashing cold in the sunlight.

A pair of enormous wings rose from its back, each flap whipping up violent gusts. But the body beneath those wings wasn’t avian at all—thick and heavy, more like a giant elephant’s frame.

A true chimera. A "neither-fish-nor-fowl" monstrosity.

And the part that set Ethan’s teeth on edge—

Several blood-red gemstones were embedded across its body.

They were set in different places, each one blinking and pulsing like a beating heart. A sinister red glow spilled from the gems, staining the air around it a dark crimson.

As it drew closer, an immense pressure rolled outward.

The kind that felt endless.

Ethan’s nerves snapped tight.

No hesitation.

Power burst inside him. White lightning surged off his body. He kicked off the air and shot upward, turning into a streak of thunder.

The next second—

They met in midair.

Ethan hovered, thunder pouring from him into a swirling storm around his body. The warped flying beast circled overhead, its wings blotting out half the sky.

"Hmph."

The monster’s voice came through clearly.

"Didn’t expect a tiny human to possess this kind of power."

Its hawk head dipped slightly. Sharp eyes locked onto Ethan.

"But—"

"This is as far as you go."

The moment it finished speaking, the gemstones across its body lit up together.

Dark-red energy erupted from each gem, spilling into the air and spreading at terrifying speed—like a blood-colored storm surging straight toward Ethan.