Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan had no intention of stopping.

He drove his full power down onto it.

The next instant—another blow.

This time the Diamond Golem couldn't hold together anymore. Its body split straight down the middle, then collapsed in a blink, smashed into a carpet of fragments.

Crystal scattered with a clattering crash, rolling between broken stone and rubble, brightening the entire underground space by a full degree.

But Ethan didn't have time to pick anything up.

At this point, he wasn't planning to deal with them one by one anymore.

Power surged again. He shot upward, white lightning and vast energy erupting behind him at the same time. In the high air, they rapidly condensed into a gigantic phantom.

The moment that phantom took shape, the entire underground was forced bright. Even the Diamond Golems rushing in from the distance paused for a beat.

Then the phantom slammed out.

Savage lightning spread completely across midair—like an entire white thunderstorm shoved sideways into the enemy mass.

At contact, the first dozen Diamond Golems shuddered—then detonated together. Crystal, shards, fractured cores, and ripped-open energy sprayed everywhere, leaving a huge chunk of the field instantly hollowed out.

Ethan dropped back to the ground, his voice crushing through the surrounding roar.

"Listen up! Their weakness is obvious—hit the energy gemstone in their chests! Kill them fast. We're going deeper!"

The moment the words hit, nobody hesitated anymore.

The attacks that had still carried a hint of probing instantly went all-out.

Phoenix Queen Ignara, Queen Seraphine, Queen Elowen—and the rest of Emerald Castle's powerhouses—moved almost at the same time.

Different colors of energy and concentrated firepower slammed into the enemy formation along separate arcs. The Fairies—swollen in strength after absorbing the underground energy—also unleashed their newly condensed power. In an instant the entire underground flashed with chaotic light, thunder roaring without end.

The Diamond Golems had numbers, and their internal energy was huge—but once their chest cores were locked, their defenses lost their support fast.

It didn't take long before the last wave of Diamond Golems was hammered into residue under the relentless bombardment.

The fight ended even faster than anyone expected.

And what made everyone's eyes burn wasn't the fallen bodies.

It was the crystal scattered across the ground.

The power sealed inside was far too dense. Anyone could feel its value. Almost the moment the last crash faded, everyone surged forward, sweeping the ground clean, scooping up the crystals at speed.

Ethan didn't idle either.

He gathered the most critical shards and energy cores first. Only then did he lift his head and look into the deeper underground—still dark, still swallowing light.

This clearly wasn't the end.

So he didn't stay. He led them onward.

The tunnel ahead was narrower than before—and quieter. From time to time they passed abandoned pillars, broken platforms, and faded rune shadows embedded in the walls. They hadn't gone far when a battered, ancient hall came into view.

It was obvious the place had been here for ages.

The walls were mottled. The floor was split with cracks. Weathered debris clung in corners.

But even so, the most striking thing in the hall wasn't the ruin.

It was the runes.

The walls were carpeted with them—dense to the point of insanity.

They climbed from one side up into the high dome above, layered and layered until there was barely any bare stone left.

Yet their forms were unusually obscure. They weren't like the passage runes or defensive runes from earlier—things whose purpose you could recognize at a glance. A lot of these patterns were so cryptic you couldn't even fully parse their structure in one look.

Just as Ethan was about to step closer and study them, Feylora moved first.

She stopped in front of the wall, lifted her palm, and pressed it against the stone—lightly.

In the next instant, dense power spread from the point of contact.

The entire wall lit up almost immediately.

Not one rune. Not two.

Every single rune across the wall awakened at the same time.

Light surged from line after line, linking in a blink into a gigantic rune network that illuminated the whole battered hall in stark clarity.

And the power pouring out of it was thick to the point of suffocation.

Ethan stood a short distance away and felt his chest tighten, his body trembling faintly.

It wasn't fear.

It was his body reacting on instinct to something too vast.

But what made his pulse jump came next.

The runes that had just flared bright suddenly shifted. They weren't just clinging to the wall and glowing anymore—like they'd been caught by an invisible pull, they began peeling away layer by layer from within the stone, then converging toward a single direction.

Toward Feylora.

The next moment, every ounce of power riding those runes poured into her body in one overwhelming rush.

Ethan's face changed instantly.

He understood better than anyone how violent that force was. Forget a Fairy—even he couldn't guarantee he could take a rune-flood that huge without paying a price. If it went out of control, it would explode inside a body. That was almost inevitable.

He lunged forward on the spot.

But when he actually got close, he stopped hard.

Because Feylora showed no sign of anything going wrong.

No pain. No collapse. Not even a wobble in her aura.

Instead, she stood there with an almost comfortable, relaxed ease on her face. And that rune power that had rushed into her didn't scatter or erupt—it settled, layer by layer, branding itself onto the surface of her body.

Patterns surfaced along her arms, her shoulders, her back, her forehead—slowly emerging like living marks, lighting her up from head to toe.

Ethan stared for a long moment without speaking.

Then Feylora slowly opened her eyes and looked at him. The light in her gaze was brighter than before—sharper, clearer, alive.

"Master," she said softly, the excitement in her voice impossible to hide, "the power inside these runes is unbelievably dense. If we release it all… we might be able to build a solid fortress right here!"

Ethan nodded in satisfaction and lightly patted Feylora's shoulder.

The touch wasn't heavy, but the Fairies nearby seemed to brighten with it anyway. And the power that had been surging chaotically through the hall since the runes awakened… finally didn't feel quite so wild.