Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 923: This Was Never a Trial

Idra trembled slightly.

The next moment, she couldn’t hold back anymore. She darted forward to an ancient tree nearby, wrapped her arms around its trunk, and inhaled deeply—greedily pulling in the energy saturating the air.

"Yes..."

Her voice shook with excitement.

"This is it. This is the scent."

"This is the Dragon God’s power—pure and real!" 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

She whipped her head around, eyes blazing, and stared straight at Ethan.

"Dad!"

"Can we... can we take the whole mountain back with us?!"

Ethan chuckled and reached out, gently ruffling her hair.

The gesture was soft, but his voice carried quiet certainty.

"If it’s something you want..."

"I’ll make sure we take it."

He lifted his gaze to the glowing peaks above, golden light cascading down like divine fire. His expression cooled, voice lowering into something sharper.

"But first—there’s something we have to deal with."

"If we don’t handle Malreth, this mountain... isn’t going anywhere."

Idra perked up immediately.

She crouched slightly and closed her eyes, her small nose twitching subtly—scanning the air, scent by scent.

The thick Dragon God force swirling around her was quickly broken down, filtered through by her senses.

Then, suddenly, her eyes flew open. She pointed to a jagged peak towering high above.

"Dad!"

"There. That direction."

"There’s a strange aura coming from the summit. It’s not pure Dragon God energy... it’s mixed. Twisted together with something else."

"That has to be Malreth."

Ethan didn’t hesitate.

The next moment—he vanished.

...

The summit of Dragonspire Range was suffocating.

The pressure struck the moment Ethan arrived, heavy enough to make the air feel like stone.

A tall man stood at the peak.

His form gleamed like it was forged from light itself, golden dragon markings glowing just beneath his skin. Power rolled off him in waves—pure Dragon God force, surging out like a tide and drawing everything around it inward.

The whole mountain’s energy was flowing into him.

Around his body, it had congealed into a heavy, natural armor—like the mountain itself was protecting him.

Ethan drew in a quiet breath... and took half a step back, land barely shifting beneath his boot.

Power stirred silently inside him.

And at that instant—

The man opened his eyes.

A guttural dragon’s roar burst from his chest, deep and violent, splitting the mountaintop air.

"Who are you?" he growled.

His voice boomed like thunder.

"You dare trespass on my domain?"

"Leave now—or I’ll tear you apart myself."

Not a threat.

A promise. Flat. Final.

But Ethan... only smiled.

He raised a hand and drew a bloodstained pouch from his storage space, then casually let it drop to the ground.

Thunk.

The bag hit hard. The mouth split open.

Chunks of still-wet, half-dried flesh tumbled out into the dirt.

"Let’s not rush."

Ethan’s tone was quiet. Calm.

"Take a whiff first."

Malreth instinctively reached out with his senses.

And froze.

His chest locked up. Breath caught mid-draw. His entire body went rigid.

That scent—

He knew it down to the marrow.

"...No."

Blood vessels burst red across Malreth’s eyes as rage overtook him, stripping away every scrap of reason.

"What... did you do... to my brother?!"

Ethan clapped his hands.

A massive Energy Disc surged to life in his palm, space bending at its razor-edged circumference.

"Nothing special," he said lightly. "I just cut him into pieces."

He gave a half-smile.

"Brought a few chunks along—so you could confirm for yourself."

"ROAAAARRRR!!!"

Malreth snapped.

His fury broke the delicate resonance between him and the Dragonspire Range in an instant. The steady flow of Dragon God energy that had been feeding into him cut off like a switch flipped.

In its place exploded chaos—wild, uncontrolled power ripping outward with no anchor.

Golden light slammed together in front of him, compressing into a dense, volatile sphere of raw energy.

With a snarl, he hurled it straight at Ethan.

But Ethan didn’t dodge.

His Energy Disc whipped out in a clean, flat arc.

The two forces collided.

SKREEEE—!!

A shriek like reality tearing echoed through the summit.

Then—

BOOOOM!!

The blastwave roared in every direction. Space fractured, a thousand snapping cracks spiderwebbing through the air. The mountain shook hard, rock shifting beneath them as if the entire range might collapse at any moment.

Destruction blasted and rebounded through the sky and stone.

No doubt about it—Malreth’s power sat at the peak of Tier 32.

With the full support of Dragon God energy, by all rights, Ethan shouldn’t have been able to stop him head-on.

But—

Inside his body, the Powered Combat Armor was running hot.

Hotter than ever.

Runes flared across its surface, consuming everything—greedily absorbing the wild Dragon God force bleeding into the air around them. The energy wasn’t rejected.

It was analyzed, broken down, crushed, reforged—and fed directly into Ethan’s weapons module.

So when the second clash broke out—

Ethan’s strike didn’t falter.

Despite being only early Stage 32, his offense held its ground against a full-strength, rage-fueled Malreth.

The two clashed, locked at the summit in a deadlock.

One, a Dragon God-blood heir collapsing under his own fury, his power spiraling wild.

The other, an outsider—a system-crafted anomaly—evolving mid-battle, adapting as fast as he bled.

And then—

The sky trembled.

Two figures dropped from above like meteors, slamming into the peak at terminal speed.

CRASH—!!

The impact exploded across the summit. Rocks shattered, shockwaves blasted outward, and Malreth was sent flying—his body skipping across the mountainside like a skipped stone, gouging a deep trench through solid earth.

Idra landed.

The instant her feet touched the ground, the entire Dragonspire Range responded.

The Dragon God energy that had been swirling protectively around Malreth—possessive and loyal—suddenly broke ranks.

It knew.

In that heartbeat, it recognized its true heir.

All that power tore away from Malreth like a dam bursting, a cascading golden surge flooding into Idra with desperate intensity.

Behind her, light gathered and sculpted itself into shape.

A massive Dragon God phantom emerged—towering, divine, terrifying. It wasn’t a single dragon, but the crumbling remains of many—will layered upon will, memory overlapping memory, forming wings that darkened the whole sky.

"Thief," Idra said, voice booming with draconic authority, her words echoing across the range.

"You dare flaunt power you stole?"

"Today, I’ll make you pay—for desecrating the bones of the Dragon Gods!"

Malreth staggered to his feet.

Then he saw her, really saw her, and his eyes snapped wide—pupils tightening.

"No."

For the first time, his voice cracked with raw fear.

"There... are no living Dragon Gods left in this world!"

"I killed them all! I consumed all their power!"

"You—where the hell did you come from?!"

But Idra didn’t answer.

She slowly raised both arms.

And the mountain responded.

RUMMMMBLLLE—!

A low quake began to rumble deep under the stone. Strata shifted. Buried runes—long-hidden—lit up in brilliant gold, carving lines through the bedrock.

All across the Dragonspire Range, broken remnants of Dragon God phantoms flickered into view.

Ancient bones—massive, timeworn skeletons of fallen dragons—rose from the earth, pulled from their graves by the weight of Idra’s will.

In that moment—

The truth was undeniable.

This wasn’t a trial ground.

This was—

A graveyard.

The burial mountain of the entire Dragon God race.