Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

As his aura climbed again, huge swaths of energy took shape high overhead. In the blink of an eye, they condensed into countless Energy Discs, which swept outward and slammed into the surrounding walls.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

After a rapid chain of explosions, the walls around them were completely pulverized, and the entire space shook. But behind the shattered stone, a new scene revealed itself.

Figures.

A lot of them—slowly walking out.

They didn't rush like enemies throwing themselves forward with killing intent. It was more like they'd finally been released from some kind of restraint, and only now could they step out of the darkness and back into the light.

Every one of them was wrapped in violently surging energy, but it was unstable—like something that had been suppressed for far too long and had only just been loosened.

Ethan showed no alertness at all.

Because when the system scanned the energy structure of this area earlier, he'd already known.

That skeleton-man hadn't been squatting here alone.

It had imprisoned a huge number of natives here, and it had left an extremely strange control force on them.

As long as it wanted, it could manipulate these natives to do anything at any time. The reason it had been able to act so recklessly was exactly because it had these people pinned behind it—living tools it could enslave and use.

Now that the thing was dead, they could finally break free for real.

Ethan walked forward slowly, stopping in front of one of the men. He raised a hand and lightly patted his shoulder.

"That skeleton is dead." His voice wasn't loud, but it landed clearly in everyone's ears. "From now on, you're free."

The moment those words fell, the natives who'd just escaped their imprisonment all froze.

Then, like something that had been stretched too tight for too long finally snapping—one after another, they dropped to their knees. Foreheads hit the ground hard, the sounds rising and overlapping.

"I never thought… we'd ever see daylight again."

"From now on, you're our benefactor."

"No—you're our master. You can order us to do anything now."

"All these years, this world's been ruled by one group after another, but we were always slaves. Now you've saved us… we don't even know what to do. The only thing we can choose is to become your slaves."

One line after another hit Ethan's ears, and even he paused, caught off guard.

He really hadn't expected their situation to be this brutal.

They hadn't just been ruled.

For endless years, they'd been crushed down here in the deepest part of this world as true slaves—stripped clean of any meaning to living at all.

At that thought, the emotion in Ethan's eyes sank.

He didn't hesitate. He took out a gemstone and placed it into the hands of one of the natives.

"You were never slaves." He looked at him, his voice steady. "And you're nobody's dogs. You can only be yourselves."

That native's hands trembled so hard he almost didn't dare take it.

Ethan simply pressed the gemstone gently into his palm and continued, "Starting now, you're free."

He looked over everyone around him and slowly raised another gemstone in his other hand.

"What I'm giving you is the core energy of this world. You can merge it into your bodies—and take your freedom back."

The words almost sounded abrupt.

But the natives there seemed to understand every bit of it.

They bowed their heads again and slammed down several more hard kowtows.

Ethan took the opportunity to open the system and sweep over this group's energy structures again.

The result surfaced quickly—these natives still carried extremely strong traces of Primordial Force inside them, but their overall power was clearly too low.

Which meant it wasn't that they were born weak.

It was that some external force had been stripping and suppressing them for a long time, forcibly capping what their Tier limit should've been.

If he could really get them to fuse with this world's origin energy again—

Then their strength would inevitably surge by a huge margin.

And once this group truly recovered, and then joined forces—

They'd become an absurdly powerful army.

Ethan looked at the newly freed natives with clear satisfaction.

Their power hadn't returned to where it should be yet, but that presence—rising back up after being buried for so long—was already enough to show the outline of what they could become.

In the next moment, he didn't linger. He raised a hand and condensed a massive energy sphere in his palm, then smashed it toward a nearby wall.

A thunderous boom.

The entire stone wall was blown through, and behind the rolling dust and flying rock, a deep passageway revealed itself.

Ethan didn't hesitate. His figure flickered and he rushed in first. Feylora, Elira, and the natives who'd just been released followed almost at the same time—footsteps, energy fluctuations, and shattered stone driving forward deeper and deeper.

Before long, they reached a dim, shadowed space.

This place was completely different from the earlier underground region. The light was faint to the point of near-blackness, yet the air was crushingly heavy—like something invisible was pressing down on every inch of space.

The energy rippling around them was unbelievably dense. And it wasn't calm. It carried the restless agitation that only comes from being forced down for far too long.

But what truly made everyone's breathing catch was what stood at the center.

At the absolute core of this world… a gigantic figure was locked in place.

This wasn't a normal-sized prisoner.

It was a giant in the truest sense.

Specially forged iron chains stretched in from all directions, wrapping tight around his arms, chest, throat, and legs, locking him here completely.

Those chains were crawling with packed, intricate runes. Every node released an oppressive suppression so heavy it made your bones ache.

And even bound like that, the aura seeping from the giant still made everyone present tense on instinct.

It was power aligned with death.

Death-Aligned Power.

Ethan's gaze paused on him for a moment, and his mood sank immediately.

When the system had scanned the energy structure of this region earlier, he'd already locked onto this figure.

He didn't know who the other party really was, but one thing was clear—someone who could be specifically imprisoned here with a barrier and rune power this strong couldn't possibly have a simple identity.

Ethan let out a slow breath, then walked forward.

The closer he got, the more obvious the crushing pressure from that Death-Aligned Power became.

Even so, he raised his palm and gently fed a portion of relatively stable energy into the giant's body. The instant that energy entered, the giant's nearly dormant presence stirred with a faint ripple.

Not long after, the giant slowly opened his eyes.

At first those eyes were slightly unfocused. But once his gaze truly landed on Ethan, clarity returned fast—along with a distinct strangeness and scrutiny.

"The power on you is strong," the giant's voice rumbled, deep as if it was震出来—shaken up—from the deepest part of the earth itself. "But you're not from this world. Don't tell me… Elysion's ruler has changed again?"

That single line made Ethan pause as well.

He clearly hadn't expected that to be the giant's first reaction. But just as he was about to answer, a distant section of the wall suddenly began to roar with a heavy, rolling sound.

It came fast.

And it came deep—like something was forcing its way through from behind the stone.

In the next instant, two tall figures smashed straight out of the rock wall.

They were large, but not slow in the slightest.

The power pouring off them was violently狂暴. The moment they appeared, the air around them distorted—and what was even harder to ignore was the iron chains clenched in their hands.

Those chains were clearly not made from ordinary material.

Every single link carried a strange, dark sheen, like it had been forged from something designed specifically to suppress power. Just looking at it made your instincts recoil.

"Who are you?" One of them stared at Ethan and the others with ice-cold eyes, murder packed tight into his voice. "You dare come here and cause trouble—do you not know this is Elysion's forbidden ground?"

As the words fell, the chains in their hands lit up at the same time.

A never-before-seen, bizarre energy spread rapidly along the surface of the chains, surging out in a sky-covering wave—like countless invisible hooked claws pressing down toward Ethan and the others.

That force was unmistakably binding and suppressive. Before it even truly reached them, tight, dense ripples had already started to appear in the surrounding space.