Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Excitement surged up in Ethan's eyes almost instantly.

He genuinely hadn't expected Elira to have become this strong.

Almost on instinct, he opened the system and ran a scan on Elira's status panel.

The result popped up right away—

33 Tier, peak.

Seeing that number, even Ethan froze for a beat.

He was just about to toss out a couple words of praise, but the moment that thought even surfaced—

A stronger power suddenly erupted from the skeleton-man with a thunderous blast. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

It wasn't struggling.

It was a complete rebound—an out-of-control surge.

The cracks that had covered its entire body started sealing at a visible speed. Fractured edges bit back together. Shattered sections were forcibly smoothed over by fresh energy. Even the violent core in its chest flared several times brighter than before.

And the aura rolling off it—

Was far more savage than it had been a moment ago.

Ethan's eyes snapped wide.

The skeleton-man had clearly been beaten to the verge of falling apart, cracks so dense its whole frame looked ready to scatter—yet it stabilized itself anyway, right in that state.

Even stranger, as its internal power spiked again, blood-red gemstones began forcing their way out between gaps in its bones, one after another.

They emerged so abruptly it was like they'd been hidden deep inside it all along, only now getting shoved out by sheer force. As they surfaced, they bled a thick, unstable red glow, bathing the entire skeleton in something even more sinister.

Ethan's heart sank.

If this thing could recover endlessly like this, then even if they suppressed it a hundred times, they'd eventually be ground down and耗死—killed by sheer attrition—right here.

But as that thought rose, Ethan's gaze suddenly stopped.

He realized the skeleton-man's power wasn't running completely on its own.

Those blood-red gems pushing out from its bone seams, the core fluctuations boiling in its chest, even that burst of force that had erupted while it repaired its cracks—there was a connection between all of it and the surrounding walls.

Subtle.

But clear.

It wasn't recovering out of thin air.

It was borrowing something from this place.

The instant he understood that, Ethan didn't hesitate anymore.

His figure flickered—then he vanished from where he stood, turning into a streak of white lightning and smashing straight into the stone wall to the side.

The wall didn't last even half a breath in front of him. It exploded on the spot. The skeleton-man immediately sensed something was wrong. The vicious light in its empty sockets sank—and it stopped trying to tank things head-on, chasing after him at once.

In only a few moments, Ethan had torn his way into a much more open area.

This place was nothing like the outer caverns.

The space was massive. Between the ground and the ceiling, dense energy filled everything until it almost glowed. And in the very center, a blood-red gemstone floated in midair.

It wasn't huge.

But it was like the heart of the entire region. Every slight tremor from it made the energy in the air contract, then expand again.

More importantly—

The power coming off that gem was terrifyingly strong.

And within it, there was clearly this world's Primordial Force.

Ethan understood in a single glance.

This was the skeleton-man's fatal weak point.

At this point, he didn't care about consequences, and he couldn't be bothered to probe slowly anymore. He lunged forward, grabbed the blood-red gemstone in his hand, then without the slightest hesitation, jammed it straight into his own body.

The instant it made contact, the entire space felt like it had been struck by something heavy.

The energy compressed inside that gem was too vast. The moment it entered Ethan, it spread like madness—through flesh, through bone, through the structure of the Powered Combat Armor.

A crushing aura burst off Ethan almost instantly, sweeping across the open area and occupying it completely.

The skeleton-man that charged in behind him saw that scene, and its eyes practically split wide.

It clearly hadn't expected Ethan to touch that gemstone directly.

In the next instant, violent power erupted from it in full, rapidly condensing a massive sphere of energy high overhead.

The moment that thing formed, the surrounding space twisted inward under the pressure. It was clearly trying to blast Ethan to death before he could truly digest the gemstone.

But before it could even throw that sphere—

Something changed on Ethan's body.

An extremely strange energy suddenly exploded from deep inside him.

It wasn't a simple boost.

It was like some core authority that had belonged here in the first place—now awakened again.

That force wrapped around Ethan's body first, then spread outward at speed. The next second, all the energy that had been drifting through the air around them reacted like it had finally met its true master, surging toward him in a sky-covering tide.

Hummm—

Ruuuuumble…

In that instant, the entire region shook.

The energy flood pressed down from every direction at once, slamming straight into the space around the skeleton-man. The massive sphere it had just condensed didn't even have time to truly come down before its entire body was swallowed by that reverse-gathering power.

The next instant—explosion.

The skeleton-man's bones cracked apart inch by inch. Blood-red gemstones shattered one after another. Its whole body was blown into fragments in midair.

In the end, all flesh and bone vanished without a trace.

Only a white soul-body remained suspended in the air—twisting violently, like it was still trying to struggle.

Of course Ethan wasn't about to let it go.

His figure flashed again. In the next instant, he was right in front of that soul-form. His five fingers clamped down, and he seized it in a death grip.

The white soul-body thrashed wildly in his palm, its surface still releasing sharp, ear-splitting pulses.

But Ethan didn't kill it immediately. He stared straight at it and asked in a low voice, "If I'm not wrong, you're a native here too. So why aren't you going after the ones invading this world—instead of making us your enemy?"

The soul-form jerked its head up. The viciousness on its face twisted until it was almost a snarl made flesh.

"I'm the true overlord of this world!"

It locked onto Ethan, its voice packed with madness and venom.

"Everyone else doesn't count! You people came here for one reason—to steal the core energy of this place. I won't let you have it!"

The more it spoke, the more frenzied it became. Even the surface of its soul started to shudder violently.

"If you don't kill me today—"

"Sooner or later, I'll wipe out every last one of you!"

It was practically screaming.

Completely insane.

Ethan watched it, his brows slowly knitting together.

At this point, he saw it perfectly clearly. This thing couldn't be negotiated with, and it couldn't be persuaded.

It wasn't protecting natives. It wasn't resisting invaders.

It was just a lunatic who saw itself as the only rightful master.

In that case, there was no reason to leave it alive.

The next instant, power inside Ethan surged explosively.

Violent white energy poured straight through his palm, ramming into the soul-body and ripping it apart from the inside.

A shriek so sharp it could split your skull rang out. Then the white soul-form burst into countless fragments in his hand, not even a trace left behind.

And with its true death, the energy of this world began to shift.

The power that had been pressed down in the depths turned thicker than ever before.