Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 963: Heavenly Demon Lightning

Right as the arguing hit its peak—

"Vmmm."

A low, heavy hum rolled out from the center of the fleet.

It didn't sound like machinery. It sounded like space itself groaning.

The next second, the air twisted.

The fleet's center looked like it got wrung by an invisible hand. The atmosphere creased with visible folds, and a tear slowly opened. A towering, middle-aged man stepped out of the rift.

No flashy entrance.

Just one step after another.

But as he emerged, that unnatural force spread like a shadow. Cracks bloomed through the surrounding space—dense and spiderweb-fine—as if the world's "skin" would split open the moment he brushed it.

Every Nexaris commander's voice dropped instantly.

Because that wasn't a weapon. It wasn't an energy cannon.

It was something higher.

A presence that made the rules around him feel… brittle.

He stopped and looked down over the sea. His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried an undeniable pressure, crisp enough to ring across the entire battlefield.

"Which one of you is in charge here?"

He lifted his chin slightly, tone as casual as if he were asking for directions.

"Step out. Now."

The air went dead silent.

Ethan's pupils tightened.

He hadn't expected the thing that walked out of that spatial tear to be this domineering—no questions, no probing, not even a glance at the situation. One sentence, and it was like he'd already decided he owned this place.

Like the world was supposed to kneel.

The atmosphere grew heavy.

The power rolling off him wasn't like lightning—wild and violent—or like flame—blazing and bright. It was something more unsettling: pure oppression. The instinctive pressure of a higher life-form bearing down on something "lesser."

Ethan's power reacted on its own.

Not by retreating.

By pushing back.

The next second—

his figure vanished from where he stood.

Boom!

An air-splitting sonic crack tore open the sky.

Ethan shot upward, hovering between the fleet and the ocean, planting himself in front of everyone like a wall.

His Powered Combat Armor fully unfolded. The energy lines on the black plating lit up one by one, the core reactor giving off a deep, resonant thrum. An invisible field expanded, wrapping him head to toe.

Violent force pulsed from him like a storm, wave after wave.

He stared straight at the middle-aged man.

No flinching.

"I'm the lord of Emerald Castle."

Ethan's voice wasn't loud, but it cut clean through the air.

He tilted his head slightly, eyes flicking over the man's warped biology—bones shaped into a bull-like skull, an irregular crystal embedded in his forehead, and a tail extending from the base of his spine with an unmistakably nonhuman curve.

"But I'm curious," Ethan went on, coldness sharp and unapologetic. "How does a guy with a cow's head and a monkey tail evolve into… whatever the hell this is?"

The air froze.

And then—

"ROAR—!!!"

The man unleashed a thunderous bellow.

Not ordinary anger.

The kind of fury that came from being insulted by something he considered beneath him.

His hand snapped up.

Blood-red energy condensed in his palm. Particles in the air were violently ripped toward it, forced together into a highly compressed sphere in an instant.

The surface of the orb warped and churned, like it was holding some struggling, caged destruction inside.

Tiny fissures began to appear in the space around it.

This wasn't a normal attack.

This was a compression core that could erase a city-level target in a heartbeat.

But—

he was one step too slow.

Ethan was already moving.

No warning.

No charging sequence.

He flashed in like a bolt of lightning, appearing right in front of him.

At that moment, the Powered Combat Armor's core hit full output. Every element inside Ethan—lightning, Infernal Essence, Primordial fragments—collapsed into his right fist.

The air screamed.

Then—

he punched.

BOOM!!!

The instant his fist met the blood-red orb, space itself seemed to stall for a split second.

The next moment—

the orb collapsed.

Not an explosion.

A shatter.

Like glass, cracking from the inside until it came apart in pieces.

Ethan's punch didn't stop.

It drove straight into the man's chest.

BAM!!

A heavy impact rang through the sky.

The man's body jerked backward. The space beneath him fractured in layers, and clear cracks spread across his armor plating.

For the first time, shock flashed in his eyes.

"That's impossible…"

His voice came out low and warped.

"You're just a life-form from a low-tier Plane World…"

"How could you possess energy on this level?"

Ethan didn't answer.

Because right then… he was stunned too.

He could feel it clearly—

the power behind that punch

was way beyond his normal output.

And—

in the instant he struck,

something inside him

woke up.

A strand of white lightning surfaced from inside his arm.

It wasn't normal lightning.

No elemental fluctuations.

No energy spillover.

It was more like—

lightning in its origin form.

That white lightning raced along his nervous system, spreading fast, touching every power source inside him.

Then—

it fused.

Not devouring.

Not overwriting.

Fusing.

Infernal Essence, Primordial fragments, elemental energy—everything that had existed as separate, independent forces just got linked by that white lightning, forming a complete, circulating loop.

Ethan's breath caught.

On instinct, he threw another punch.

This time—

the white lightning erupted completely.

BOOM!!!

The lightning speared straight through the man's body.

No explosion.

But the middle-aged man convulsed violently.

The white lightning burrowed into him like something alive, tearing apart his energy structure in a frenzy.

"Leader!!"

The Nexaris soldiers around him panicked instantly.

They'd never seen anything like this.

Several of them rushed in and forcibly dragged him back toward the fleet.

The moment they touched him—

"AAAGH—!!"

The white lightning spread along the contact points in an instant.

Screams rang out one after another.

They had to let go immediately.

Ethan didn't pursue.

He backed away slowly.

Because he could feel it—

the change wasn't done.

The white lightning was reconstructing everything inside him.

Even Idra and Auri within him—

their energy was starting to merge with that white lightning too. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Like this power…

was the real core all along.

Ethan immediately pulled up his system interface.

The numbers refreshed like they'd gone insane.

And finally—

a brand-new energy designation appeared:

Heavenly Demon Lightning