Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan was floating in midair as well, never once coming down.

He remained completely still, like he'd sunk into an even deeper state of absorption. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Across the Powered Combat Armor's surface, new light-patterns kept flaring on and fading out. The pressure rolling off him stayed locked at a level that felt lethally unstable.

And then—

From the dead center of the energy sea, a completely different ripple spread out.

It started as the faintest tremor. Then it was as if something churned the core from the inside, and a brutally violent storm surged outward in a single sweep.

It wasn't a normal whirlpool.

It was like a chunk of core energy had been torn open by force. Wherever it passed, the surrounding space visibly buckled and collapsed.

Boom!

Right after that, thunderous roaring detonations chained together through the underground.

The center of the energy sea was ripped apart, and an extremely bizarre figure appeared in front of everyone.

It stood there with a blurred outline, yet it carried an oppressive weight that crushed down on the senses. More importantly, the power radiating from it was savage to the extreme—so savage that the moment it appeared, it threw the layered, once-stable gaseous energy around it into total disorder.

Feylora, guarding the perimeter, spotted it instantly.

She didn't hesitate. She drew on every last ounce of her strength at once.

The rune power and Fairy energy she'd just strengthened in the deep underground surged along her arms, gathering fast—condensing in her hands into a massive bow.

The bow didn't look fully like metal or wood. It was more like a weapon built from energy compressed to the limit and interlocked rune structures. The instant it lit up, the air around it tightened, drawn taut.

"What are you?" Feylora's voice slammed over. "What are you doing here?"

The strange figure didn't answer.

Its expression barely changed at all. It simply lifted a hand and plucked a golden sphere of energy from the center of its chest.

The moment that thing left its body, the surrounding fluctuations snapped into a different rhythm.

In the next instant, it hurled the golden sphere with vicious force.

Once it left its hand, it shot forward on a dead-straight line. Before it even hit anything, the power compressed inside was already slipping out of control.

Then it detonated in midair.

What exploded wasn't just a shockwave—an entire mass of berserk energy took shape on the spot, and from it charged out a gigantic wild bull.

It was wrapped head to hoof in golden energy. Its four hooves stamped on empty air. Its silhouette was huge and heavy, and when it lowered its head, it looked like a mountain slamming straight toward them.

Feylora's pupils contracted hard.

At this point, there was no time to think. She released the bowstring she'd already drawn to the limit.

That arrow—packed with dense rune power and Fairy energy—shot out along a blinding path, meeting the charging bull head-on.

The instant the two forces collided in midair, the space around them cracked with a web of fractures.

A short, razor-sharp blast rang out. Then the shockwave surged in every direction, whipping the nearby, not-yet-stable energy currents into chaos.

Feylora's arrow did stop the bull.

But it only stopped it.

The arrow's power began to break apart on contact, failing to inflict any truly substantive damage.

Worse, the strike seemed to enrage it. The enormous energy bull jerked its head up and let out a roar so heavy the entire underground shuddered with it.

"ROOOOAR—!"

The next moment, the energy across its body surged past the limit.

Great sheets of gold and savage power gathered rapidly along its surface, and in the blink of an eye, a gigantic sphere condensed in midair—then smashed down toward the ground below with murderous force.

Feylora didn't retreat.

The wild bull formed from golden energy threw its head high. The massive energy sphere above it was already taking shape at speed, and the space around it gave off a fine, constant cracking as it was compressed.

Feylora only drew a short breath, then pulled her greatbow open again.

This time, she didn't fire just one arrow.

The instant the first arrow left the string, the second and third were already chasing right behind it.

Those arrows—condensed from rune power and Fairy energy together—dragged bright streaks across the air, so fast they didn't even leave complete afterimages.

In the blink of an eye, the bull's chest, neck, flank, and limbs were pierced in succession. Its massive body was pinned in midair as if nailed there, forced into a living pincushion.

The next moment, Feylora's fingers loosened.

Every arrow lit up at once.

The power compressed inside each shaft abruptly lost control, and berserk energy detonated along every puncture wound at the same time.

First, dozens of blinding white flashes bloomed outward from inside the bull's body. Then came a chain of dense, muffled explosions.

The gigantic energy bull didn't even get a second roar out before it was blown through from the inside. Its entire body shattered in midair into great sprays of broken energy that scattered in every direction.

The man standing not far away finally changed expression.

He clearly hadn't expected Feylora to erupt with that kind of strength in a head-on clash.

In that instant, the contempt in his eyes vanished completely, replaced by a hard, obvious weight. But it lasted only a heartbeat before more direct killing intent surged up and took over.

He steadied his breathing fast, flipped his hands, and more than a dozen energy spheres condensed between his palms.

They varied in size, but each one contained violently unstable power.

They spun rapidly around his arms, their surfaces flickering with shifting light-and-dark patterns. Then he whipped them all out at once, blotting the air as they crashed down toward Feylora.

Feylora's gaze sank. She immediately spread the Powered Combat Armor across her entire body.

Layer after layer of patterns lit up over the armor's surface. Runes and energy structures locked together completely in an instant.

Then a savage surge of power poured from within the frame, unfurling along her body like a tidal wave—and it swallowed all the incoming spheres in one sweep.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A chain of explosions blossomed high in the air.

But none of them truly struck Feylora.

The moment those spheres entered her field, it was like they'd been thrown into a space being crushed and squeezed madly. Their trajectories collapsed, and then, one after another, they were ground apart.

Great bursts of loose energy detonated in front of her, yet they still couldn't shake the armor's outer layer in any meaningful way.

The shock in the man's eyes—this time—couldn't be contained at all.

He stared at Feylora, and for the first time his voice carried unmistakable disarray.

"If I'm not mistaken, the energy you're releasing… is the power of the Fey Sovereign." He locked onto her, his gaze mixed with disbelief and confusion. "Why would someone like you be mixed up with these low-grade Plane World insects?"

Feylora didn't answer.

She just kept pushing forward.

The armor drove her body into a straight, razor-sharp line through the air. Power surged off her in endless waves, slamming into the man again and again.

There were no fancy changes—just pure frontal suppression. Every blow made the surrounding space shudder in ripples.

The man was forced back repeatedly, until he was smashed hard into the wall. The stone behind him burst open with spreading fractures.

But he clearly wasn't someone who could be crushed to death that easily.

For a stretch of time after, the two of them fell into the most direct kind of energy exchange.

Back and forth. No probing. No pauses. The underground space was lit again and again by detonating power.

Yet the more they fought, the more the situation stiffened. Feylora couldn't immediately shatter him completely, and even as he was driven back under constant pressure, the man still couldn't tear open her defense.

In the stalemate, the man's eyes flickered.

As if something had suddenly occurred to him.

The next moment, he yanked a blue gemstone from his body. Without hesitating for even an instant, he crushed it hard.

The instant the gem cracked, a cold, eerie wave of energy spread outward. Then the space around them began to split with countless dimensional fissures.

Not one or two.

They opened in rapid succession, like dozens of doors being torn open at once from the other side.

Then—endless figures stepped out.

There were a lot of them, and they moved fast. The moment they appeared, the power pouring off them pressed into the space together, every aura thick with aggression.

And worse—there was no hesitation at all. Almost the instant their feet settled, each of them condensed a different weapon.

Blades, spears, long-handled battleaxes, massive bows, energy-edged knives.

Weapons of every shape formed in their hands in a heartbeat. The pressure piling up in that single moment made one thing brutally clear—

If they attacked together, Feylora wouldn't be able to hold.