Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 967: The Calm Before Worse

Ethan fell silent.

He didn’t know how to answer her.

But he didn’t push her away.

By then, the space around them had finally settled completely.

That man from the Ghost Void—once his energy core was gone—started to come apart. His body broke down piece by piece until it became nothing but invisible motes of energy, dissolving into the air.

In the distance, Emerald Castle’s forces began regrouping.

Thalorien led his people back up from the deep seafloor. Trailing behind their formation, batch after batch of Worldheart Crystals were being hauled out with extreme care. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The crystals gave off a steady, ancient pulse. As they arrived, the camp’s chaotic energy environment rapidly smoothed out, rebalancing like a storm finally passing.

With those minerals in hand, Ethan felt it for the first time—

a controllable advantage.

The rare ores refined from the Worldheart Crystal vein weren’t like ordinary energy crystals that simply stored power. They were more like stable conduits—energy mediums that naturally carried and harmonized flow.

When they were embedded into the Sky Fortress’s core structure, the entire floating citadel’s energy circulation became visibly smoother. Defensive matrices that used to guzzle power to stay online could now maintain stable operation through the minerals’ own resonance.

More importantly, when Ethan slotted these ores into the armor nodes of his Powered Combat Armor, he felt Heavenly Demon Lightning change.

The ores became new anchors.

Lightning circulation inside the armor turned steadier—and faster.

Every cycle ran cleaner than before, like the boundary between his body and the suit was thinning, little by little.

He even tried integrating some of the ore into external weapon modules.

The results blew past his expectations.

When he ran the test program, white lightning formed a stable energy shell over the armor’s surface. Energy loss compressed to an extremely low level, while output strength rose sharply.

Meaning: in real combat, he could sustain high-intensity output far longer, without burning out the way he used to.

That shift gave Ethan something he’d never really had before—

the capital to face higher-Tier existences head-on.

The next month, the world fell into an eerie calm.

Emerald Castle’s army kept consolidating resources. Thalorien’s people helped haul more Worldheart Crystals up from the seabed, stabilizing the entire faction’s energy environment day by day.

The Sky Fortress hovered high overhead like a silent guardian.

And every time Ethan activated his Powered Combat Armor, his control over his own strength became more precise.

But he never truly relaxed.

Because he knew Nexaris wouldn’t just quit.

And sure enough—

one month later.

The sky split open again.

This wasn’t an ordinary spatial tear.

It was a far more stable, far larger dimensional rift.

The edges of it were clean, geometric—like space had been precisely cut by some higher-level force, not ripped open by brute strength.

Then a figure stepped out slowly.

He was enormous. His aura wasn’t hidden at all, and the moment he appeared, the world’s energy flow visibly shifted.

The air grew heavy. Space itself warped faintly. Even the Sky Fortress’s defensive systems reacted automatically, sounding a low, rumbling warning.

His gaze swept over everything below.

"How pathetic," he said, voice deep and clear, carrying a natural pressure that didn’t need to try. "Those scraps couldn’t even deal with you."

He lifted a hand slightly.

Energy began to gather.

At the same time, the rift behind him started to widen—and a massive army began filing out.

Nexaris’s legions.

But this time, they were completely different.

Every Nexaris soldier wore an upgraded set of Powered Combat Armor. The plating was more complex, the energy circulation nodes clearly reinforced. Most striking of all—

each of them had an energy-core gemstone set into their forehead.

Those gems weren’t decoration.

They were actively releasing power.

Energy looped through their armor in constant cycles, pushing their presence far beyond what ordinary Tier life-forms could reach.

Ethan stood at the front of the Sky Fortress, expression heavy.

He could feel it clearly: this army’s overall energy strength was leagues beyond the last invasion force.

No hesitation.

He issued orders immediately.

Emerald Castle’s forces rose into the air. Thalorien’s people spread into battle formation. The Sky Fortress’s defense grid went fully active, layers of energy barriers unfolding across the sky.

Both sides faced each other in the high atmosphere.

The air felt like it had turned to stone.

Ethan’s breathing gradually evened out.

Heavenly Demon Lightning began to circulate inside him, resonating with the ores embedded in his Powered Combat Armor.

He could feel it clearly—energy was gathering, locking into a stable, powerful cycle.

The next second, he made the first move.

He raised a hand.

White lightning condensed fast, forming a high-density sphere of power in his palm. It wasn’t unstable like a normal attack. It was fully compressed, like a miniature star.

Then he pushed it out.

The sphere cut across the sky.

The instant it made contact—

BOOM!!!

White lightning detonated.

The armor on more than a dozen Nexaris soldiers collapsed on impact. The energy-core gemstones in their foreheads shook violently, then went dark. Their bodies dropped like they’d lost all support, plunging out of the air.

The entire battlefield erupted.

Emerald Castle and the Thalaryn forces launched their attacks at the same time.

Nexaris answered immediately. The energy-core gems in their foreheads released steady power, driving their attack strength far beyond ordinary Tier fighters.

The sky vanished under energy.

Lightning, energy beams, and tearing spatial cracks intertwined nonstop.

Every collision set off violent tremors.

Bodies started falling.

Space fractured again and again.

Blood evaporated in the air, becoming a thin red mist that slowly stained the whole sky, dyeing everything in a washed-out, brutal crimson.

The battle dragged on.

So long that time itself blurred.

In the end, the Nexaris army began to withdraw.

Their formation unraveled, the dimensional rift reopened, and the remnants pulled back at full speed.

The sky finally returned to a brief, fragile calm.

But the price was just as heavy.

Emerald Castle and the Thalaryn had taken massive losses too.

Ethan hovered in midair, his chest rising and falling hard.

The aftershock of the fight still spread through the air in slow waves. Residual energy crawled over his armor like fine static, faint currents skating across the surface. Heavenly Demon Lightning hadn’t fully quieted—white arcs still flowed along the suit’s patterns, keeping him in a state where he could explode into motion again at any moment.

He could feel the difference.

It wasn’t just more power.

It was control.

Before, the white lightning had felt like borrowed strength—violent, unpredictable.

Now it was part of him.

It moved with his breathing. It tightened or expanded with his intent. It even warned him on its own, a subtle prickle before danger arrived.

He drew in a slow breath, then let it out.

The energy in the air trembled in response.

His gaze dropped.

Below, Emerald Castle’s army was regrouping. The Sky Fortress hovered high overhead, its outer defense matrix still half-active. Thalorien’s people were already repairing structures damaged in the fight.

Ethan spoke at last. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried cleanly across the battlefield.

"Everyone—enter recovery status."

He paused, his eyes turning darker.

"The next battles will be worse."

No one questioned him.

Emerald Castle’s fighters quickly returned to their Creature Dwellings to repair gear, replenish energy, and prepare fresh combat units. After everything they’d fought through, they’d learned one thing the hard way—

every victory was only the opening act of a bigger war.