Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Before Gorathul could even properly react, Ethan was already moving.

He didn’t give him a single breath to recover. Ethan flashed across the sky—so fast he was reduced to a stretched-out white afterimage.

In the next instant, he was hovering right in front of Gorathul. The energy in his hand compressed and condensed mid-charge, and in the blink of an eye it shaped itself into a massive greatsword.

It came down with a weighty, sky-splitting force.

Gorathul’s expression changed on the spot.

He truly hadn’t expected Ethan to become this terrifying after fusing those powers.

The pressure wasn’t just a gap in combat strength anymore. It felt like the space around him was collapsing inward, squeezing him so hard even his breathing hitched.

At this point, how could he dare underestimate Ethan?

Almost on instinct, Gorathul forced power into his palm, formed an energy orb in an instant, and hurled it forward with everything he had.

At the same time, he had no intention of trading blows. He twisted, trying to pull back and disengage.

Ethan didn’t give him the chance.

The moment that energy orb left Gorathul’s hand, Ethan’s aura surged explosively. Sheets of white lightning and an even higher-tier fused power rolled outward in layers, forming a pressure field so dense it was almost tangible.

It slammed down and locked Gorathul in place again.

"You really are ridiculous."

Ethan’s voice echoed through the sky—but it wasn’t his voice anymore.

Five different tones overlapped, layered and pressed together until it sounded like they were speaking from some other dimension. The effect was eerie, heavy with authority, the kind of sound that made your scalp tighten.

"The war has already started."

He lifted the greatsword, eyes pinning Gorathul like a nail through flesh.

"You honestly think you can still run?"

In the next breath, the surrounding energy compressed inward at the same time.

"Today, I’m going to tear you into pieces."

As the words fell, the fused power inside Ethan surged down like a tidal wave.

It wasn’t a single strike. It wasn’t even a chase from one direction.

It was the space itself closing in on Gorathul—like countless invisible hands pressing him toward the center, crushing from every angle.

Gorathul’s whole body jolted.

He finally, truly panicked.

At this point, he couldn’t afford to hold anything back. He ripped two blood-red gems from his body and threw them out. The moment they left his hand, they flared blindingly bright in midair—

Then both detonated, releasing a brutally violent wave of energy.

Ethan could tell at a glance.

Those weren’t ordinary energy crystals.

They were energy cores—two of them—each from a different world.

The instant they exploded in the sky, the power inside them lashed outward without logic or restraint, forcibly ripping a gap through the suppressive field Ethan had just formed.

Sheets of white lightning and the spatial locking structure shattered in an instant. Even the high-pressure region that had been tightening around Gorathul wobbled and destabilized.

And Gorathul seized that opening.

Those blood-red gems didn’t behave like normal weapons—detonating and then dispersing. Even as they blew apart, their energy rolled back toward him, reversing course like it had been yanked on a chain.

In the next moment, they fused completely into Gorathul’s body.

Then the change began.

His body shuddered violently—and swelled.

His skeleton stretched taller. Muscle and energy structure expanded outward in layered waves. His already massive frame shot up again within a few breaths, until he became a giant in the truest sense of the word.

It wasn’t just getting bigger.

It was a reinforcement—an outright step into a different tier of battle.

Savage power boiled up from inside him, and in his hand it rapidly condensed into a spear.

The weapon looked like it had been forged from compressed blood-colored energy, its surface crawling with fine streams of light. With the slightest flick, it scraped the surrounding space hard enough to score a black裂—an ugly, dark tear.

Then, gripping that spear, Gorathul charged straight at Ethan head-on.

There wasn’t a trace of fear in Ethan’s eyes.

He simply raised his palm. Inside him, power surged up in waves, and domineering white lightning spilled out across his entire body.

But it didn’t scatter randomly.

It gathered fast in front of his palm, threads of electricity twisting together, layering and compressing—until it condensed into an even heavier greatsword.

The next instant, the two of them collided head-on.

Boom!

A thunderclap detonated in the high sky, and then a blanket of violent energy spilled outward.

The moment spear met greatsword, the space around the impact point warped—then shattered. Huge cracks exploded outward from the center, spreading like someone had grabbed the sky with both hands and ripped it open.

But this time was different—

There wasn’t much follow-up backlash of dimensional turbulence.

Because the instant those rifts opened, the even higher-intensity power the two of them unleashed immediately after reached in and crushed them apart.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

...

The clashes that followed came so fast they were almost impossible to track with the naked eye.

They slammed from one position to the next, spear and greatsword striking again and again. The edges of their weapons burst and splintered—then were instantly patched by energy, reforged mid-swing.

Every collision churned up a wide zone of imbalance. The sky above looked like cloth being ripped back and forth—shredded one moment, then flattened again the next by sheer force.

No one could’ve said how many times they traded blows.

By the end, even their energy-forged weapons were shattering one after another.

Only then did they drift apart, each hovering at the edge of the sky, staring at the other through warped air.

Neither of them was breathing evenly anymore. Their chests rose and fell hard, but the power pouring off them didn’t slow for a second.

Not one of them had truly retreated.

Ethan eased back a single step.

He pressed both hands together in front of his chest, and the energy inside him rushed into his palms.

It grew denser. Heavier. More and more compressed—until it became a massive sphere of power. White lightning and blended energy roiled across its surface, and from deep inside it came a low, rumbling vibration, like something enormous grinding its teeth.

The next moment, Ethan hurled it straight out with vicious force.

Gorathul, of course, refused to be outdone.

He spread his arms wide. Power poured from him all at once, rapidly condensing in front of him into a blood-red gem.

It looked like a solidified core, but what churned inside wasn’t stability—it was pure, violently unstable destruction.

Then the two forces met head-on.

World-ending might swept outward in that instant.

At the center of the collision, everything contracted sharply—then exploded outward, flooding the entire world in a warped, distorted light. Farther away, the altars and ruins that still stood were caught by the aftershock and began to collapse in chunks, cracking apart piece by piece.

If they kept fighting like this—

Elysion really could be erased completely.