Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 1001: When the Core Broke

As soon as that new legion formed up and started to close in, the air turned scorching and oppressive.

Ethan responded on instinct, unleashing everything he had. White lightning erupted from deep inside him and raced through the air, spreading outward until a surging thunder domain formed around his body.

It wasn’t just flashy light.

It carried real pressure—dense enough that the space around him trembled.

At the same time, the goblins fighting under him rushed in.

They moved fast and brutal, no pauses, no fear—charging straight into the enemy formation. Crude weapons and energy strikes crossed in midair, screeching on impact, and the battlefield snapped into a chaotic melee.

In the middle of that chaos—

"Bzzzz—"

A strange vibration suddenly buzzed through the air.

Ethan’s nerves went razor-tight.

The next second, a figure wrapped in blinding radiance rushed in at terrifying speed. In less than a breath, he was right in front of Ethan.

That aura—

Was like a burning sun.

Searing energy spilled outward, and the temperature spiked instantly.

Ethan could even feel his skin scorching, his blood flow accelerating like his whole body had been thrown into an oven.

He backed up a few steps without thinking, forcing his breathing steady.

Inside his white lightning, a faint chill began to mix in. The icy presence wasn’t strong, but it was unnervingly stable—a cold current sliding through him.

Heat and cold balanced inside him for a brief moment.

And with that balance, he got control of his body back.

The next instant, Ethan snapped his hand up.

Violent power burst from him. White lightning condensed overhead, compressing again and again until a huge greatsword silhouette took shape above him.

It wasn’t a physical weapon.

It was a cutting structure made of pure energy.

Ethan swung his arm down. The massive greatsword slammed toward the radiant enemy with a roar that tore through the air, cleaving straight for him.

The man’s pupils shrank hard.

He clearly hadn’t expected Ethan to burst out with that kind of force under pressure.

He didn’t take it head-on.

Instead, he yanked up his own energy.

Blazing power spewed from his body and gathered fast in the air. It spun, condensed, and finally formed the shadow of a gigantic bird.

That bird—

Had three legs.

The moment it fully formed, heat swept across the entire space. The air seemed to ignite, and even the distant rocks showed signs of melting.

Ethan’s eyes tightened.

That kind of heat was almost impossible to endure head-on.

He immediately condensed a thick energy barrier around himself, while still driving the greatsword down.

Next second—

The two forces collided.

A massive impact detonated in midair. White lightning and scorching flame devoured each other, forming a twisted zone of raging energy. The shockwave blasted outward, space shuddering so hard that fine cracks spiderwebbed through the air.

Then the enemy suddenly threw his head back and roared.

"All hail Zerathrax!"

The shout echoed across the sky.

With that cry, his power fully erupted.

Scorching light poured from him. He looked like a star being lit from within. All his energy dumped out at once, like he meant to burn the world clean.

Ethan’s stomach dropped.

He understood immediately—

The bastard was going to self-destruct.

At that level, if it fully detonated, it would wipe out the entire battlefield.

No time to hesitate.

Ethan’s body shattered in an instant.

Countless black particles burst out of him, a black storm surging straight at the enemy. They pierced the man’s energy shell and flooded into his body.

Before the self-destruction could reach its final stage, Ethan’s consciousness had already seized control through those particles.

The rampaging energy was forcibly cut off mid-buildup.

The enemy’s motion froze.

"That’s impossible—!"

His voice was packed with terror and disbelief.

"What did you do?! Why is my body—why can’t I control it?!" 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Ethan didn’t answer.

He gathered his consciousness inside the man’s body at top speed, locking straight onto the Primordial Core in the central core zone.

Next instant—

He surged with force.

"Crack!"

The energy core was ripped out by sheer power.

In that moment, blazing heat erupted like a flood.

Ethan could practically feel that energy trying to bite back at his consciousness. Even the black particles showed brief signs of destabilizing under the extreme temperature, like they were about to come apart.

He retreated immediately.

At the same time, he compressed everything into his hand.

White lightning surged in and fused with the Primordial Core, forming an unstable energy structure in a heartbeat.

Then—

It blew.

BOOM—!

A terrifying explosion tore open the sky. The enemy’s body was shredded in an instant, bursting into countless fragments. Flames and energy debris scattered in every direction, leaving a wide swath of searing light hanging in the air.

When it finally cleared—

Ethan reformed his body.

He hovered there, still wrapped in leftover fire, like someone who’d just stepped out of an inferno.

The battlefield fell into a brief, stunned silence.

Everyone was shaken by what they’d just seen.

That existence people called the Fire War God had been completely killed in a matter of moments.

And in Ethan’s hand—

Was the Primordial Core he’d just seized.

In the next second, the mood on the battlefield flipped.

Emerald Castle’s morale detonated.

People unleashed everything at once. Power flooded the sky, forming an overwhelming offensive wave.

Ethan slowly raised his hand.

He hung above the battlefield, the burning core resting in his palm. Force poured out of him and resonated with it, washing the sky in blinding white and gold.

He looked down.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it landed cleanly in everyone’s ears.

"These bugs hiding in dark corners—there’s nothing to be afraid of."

His fingers tightened slightly.

"Now listen to my order."

The next moment—

"Twist their heads off and kick them around like balls."

The command dropped.

Everyone moved at once.

Emerald Castle’s warriors surged into the enemy lines like a fire catching dry grass, power exploding across the field in an instant.

The sudden counterattack caught Nexaris’s army completely off guard. In a short burst of time, huge numbers of them were smashed apart.

The sky filled with energy again.

And this time—

The balance had fully tipped.

Ethan took a deep breath, forcing the turbulence inside his body back into line. Then he stopped suppressing the power he’d just stolen.

In his palm, the flame core trembled nonstop. Energy churned inside it like trapped magma, even warping the air around it with heat.

In the next instant, he slammed his own lightning into it.

White electricity poured from his hand into the flame core, colliding violently with the searing energy inside.

The two forces repelled each other for a split second—then fused.

Fine cracks crawled over the core’s surface, like it could blow at any moment.

Ethan didn’t give it time.

He snapped his arm and hurled the flame core—now boosted to its absolute limit—straight into Nexaris’s formation.

Space itself seemed to tear.

The core dragged a streak of incandescent white and blood-red behind it. Heat and current twisted the air together, carving out an unstable channel through the sky.

Almost the instant it dropped into the center of their ranks—

The explosion hit.

The light compressed into a single point, then expanded violently.

A shockwave spread at an unbelievable speed. Fire and thunder braided into a storm of destruction, swallowing everything in range.

When the glare faded, the once-dense formation had been ripped wide open.

Huge swaths of Nexaris soldiers were vaporized on the spot. The ones who survived the initial blast were flung away, bodies bursting midair into torn meat under the impact.

The air reeked of char and blood. Even the ground in the distance had been carved into a massive crater.

Ethan’s eyes lit slightly.

He could clearly feel it—the destructive output was beyond what he’d expected. Forcing two extreme energies to fuse like that had produced something close to total annihilation.

He was about to press the advantage and finish off the stragglers when—

The sky shook.

Not the leftover aftershock of the blast.

This was a tremor coming from space itself.

A deep, muffled roar rolled across the upper air, like some ancient beast waking up.

The next second, dozens of spatial vortices ripped open along the horizon at the same time. Darkness and light interwove, as if some gigantic gate was being forced open.