Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 962: She Was Chosen

Caelion didn't answer.

He just locked onto Raezion with a death grip.

Not letting him leave.

The next second—

white lightning came down.

BOOM—!!!

Light swallowed everything.

Sound vanished.

Air vanished.

Thunder devoured them both.

When the glare finally faded…

they were still standing there.

But their bodies—

were nothing but char.

No breath of life.

No energy fluctuations.

They'd been "erased."

Ethan's breathing stalled.

This wasn't defeat.

This wasn't death.

This was—

total deletion.

But the truly creepy part?

That white lightning…

didn't disappear.

It hung there in midair.

Like it was waiting for something.

Right then, the girl in Ethan's arms suddenly tore free.

She sprinted straight for the lightning.

"Don't!"

Ethan reached out on instinct—

too late.

She plunged into the white lightning.

No explosion.

No annihilation.

The white lightning began to contract.

It didn't destroy her.

Instead—

it flowed into her body.

The clear, transparent thunder started to change.

Her presence surged upward, fast.

Space itself began to tremble.

A system warning blared:

Detected: Vessel activated.

Detected: Origin Lightning fusion.

Ethan realized something in a snap.

She wasn't being attacked.

She was being chosen.

He lunged after her.

Grabbed her arm—

and the instant they made contact—

the sky went completely feral.

Lightning didn't "strike" anymore.

It "converged."

Endless lightning poured in from every corner of the world,

funneling into her—

and at the same time—

into Ethan.

Ethan's body started to slip out of his control.

His consciousness was dragged deeper and deeper.

And then—

a familiar voice spoke.

"Nethora Lightning Vessel…"

Lily.

She was awake.

Her power surged out from inside Ethan, spilling free and wrapping around the girl.

Not an attack.

A stabilization.

Three forces—

transparent lightning,

white Origin Lightning,

Infernal Primordial Power—

began to merge.

Ethan's body started to change.

His energy structure was being rewritten.

His Tier began to climb.

Breaking through.

Breaking through again.

Until—

Tier 32 (Early Stage)

The lightning gradually calmed.

The sky returned to silence.

Lily's power slowly withdrew.

"Not yet…"

Her voice faded.

She fell asleep again.

The girl's body went limp.

She collapsed back into Ethan's arms.

Unconscious.

The lightning vanished.

The world returned to stillness.

Ethan drew in a deep breath. The tremors in his chest had only just calmed down, and the echo of them still wouldn't let go.

He looked down at the little girl in his arms. Her face was so pale she looked like a seashell that'd been soaked too long in saltwater. Clear lightning flickered across her skin—on and off, on and off—like embers about to die in the wind.

He didn't overthink it. Holding her tight, he turned and dropped back down in front of Thalorien.

"Is this kid trying to get herself killed?" Thalorien stared at her, brows drawn into a hard line. He sounded pissed—and underneath it, helpless in a way he couldn't hide. "Why would she charge straight into the center of a lightning field?"

Ethan didn't answer. He just adjusted his hold, making sure she was secure.

Thalorien went quiet for a few seconds, like he was forcing down a truth he didn't want to say out loud. In the end, he exhaled.

"Actually… the one who got struck dead by that white lightning just now was her brother."

The words hit like ice dropped into the ocean.

Ethan's brow tightened immediately. He got it now. The girl hadn't rushed in because she was reckless—she'd moved on instinct. That kind of instinct that said, even if I die, I'm still grabbing at the last possible chance.

At this point, nothing else mattered.

Ethan supported the girl's back with one hand and pressed the other to the center of her chest. Power flooded out of him like a tide, pouring into her in a steady, unbroken stream.

It wasn't violent. It was unnervingly stable—like an invisible rope pulling her fraying energy channels back into alignment, one strand at a time.

The clear lightning stopped lashing around so wildly. Her breathing returned, faint but real, a weak rise and fall.

Thalorien didn't try to stop him.

He understood better than anyone: the only thing that could protect this little girl right now was the strange power on Ethan. If they tried using a Thalaryn energy barrier, the transparent lightning would just recoil and chew through her even faster.

And then—

the air ripped with a sharp, tearing whistle.

A figure shot in from the distance, moving so fast it looked like some force had literally flung her back from the battlefield. Her toes skimmed the sea, carving a long line of spray, before she slammed down in front of them.

"Master!" she practically shouted. "Something huge just happened—Nexaris's army is already on the horizon!" 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

It was Elira.

Her aura was violently intense, like a volcano that had just erupted and was still breathing heat. Her battle armor was webbed with cracks, and there were flecks of blood on her shoulder and arm plates.

She was breathing hard, but her eyes were razor-clear—the kind of clarity you only see on someone who just crawled back from the edge of death.

She didn't need to explain more. Everyone could tell.

She'd already hit the enemy head-on, and she'd hit them hard.

Ethan's stomach dropped.

Nexaris's army was moving way faster than he'd expected.

He didn't hesitate. He pulled back part of the power he'd been feeding into the girl, leaving behind a stabilizing "lock" of energy to keep her condition from collapsing.

The next instant, his presence surged.

His Powered Combat Armor floated up like an invisible hand had called it awake. Plates snapped into place one after another, fitting to his body with clean, heavy clicks.

Then Ethan became a bolt of lightning and tore through the air.

Thalorien didn't dare waste a second either. He threw up a hand, voice low but cutting like a blade.

"All combat personnel—rally!"

The Thalaryn guardians moved instantly. Energy barriers re-formed and shifted position. Weapons and formations were rebuilt in just a few breaths, and then they surged toward the surface.

Because none of them had imagined Nexaris's main force would reach this place so soon.

Ethan blasted out of the underwater ruins' perimeter, and the world opened up.

Above the sea, the sky looked like it had been fully claimed by iron and fire.

Enemy silhouettes packed the horizon from end to end. Warships hovered beneath the clouds, lined up so perfectly it was suffocating. This wasn't a messy "raid."

This was a fleet that had rehearsed the same approach a thousand times.

Every ship gleamed with cold metal sheen, hulls etched with complex energy patterns. A brutal energy field radiated outward from the fleet's center, pressing down so hard the sea itself looked wrong—waves forced low, like they were struggling under some invisible gravity.

And the weapons were worse.

Gunports, launch arrays, energy rails… layered on layered, too many to count, like the entire sky had turned into rows of bared fangs.

At the same time, deep in the core of Nexaris's formation—

their command channel was already exploding.

"What the hell is going on? Are you telling me every mechanoid we deployed here has already been wiped out?"

"Those mechanoids were built with special materials, top-tier loadouts. There's no way they get erased that fast. The enemy used some dirty method, or… there's an interference factor we didn't account for!"

"Doesn't matter what the cause is. This zone can't be left standing—bring all weapons to maximum output and eliminate them right here!"

Orders overlapped and piled up. Rage, confusion, and a thin thread of fear were forced into voices that stayed cold by sheer discipline.

Because before they'd moved out, they'd simulated this.

Every mechanoid's combat rating. Every weapon's output ceiling. Every tactic's win-rate curve—tested, validated, run through the data until the numbers looked inevitable.

By all logic, even if they ran into a stronger civilization, they should've been able to crush them cleanly.

They should not be getting a full blackout of signals in a place like this.

And that, more than anything, meant one dangerous fact:

The enemy wasn't inside their "controllable range."