Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 973: The Moment Everything Changed

For the first time, something shifted in Rak’tharion’s eyes.

That look of pure contempt didn’t disappear, but there was a new weight behind it now—thin as a hairline crack, but real.

He could feel it clearly. This power didn’t belong to any normal energy system. It was older. Deeper. Closer to the root of everything.

The presence leaking off that white lightning made his energy core twitch with instinctive unease.

"How unexpected." Rak’tharion spoke slowly, his voice low and icy. "A mere creature from a low-grade Plane World... and you can actually control this kind of power."

He raised one hand.

The air around his fingers stiffened as if it had flash-frozen. Deep red energy stretched out from his palm, gathering, condensing—until it formed a scepter.

Its shape resembled a massive serpent coiled in on itself. The body was forged from some unknown metal, its surface carved with dense, dark crimson patterns. Where the snake’s head should be, a blood-red gemstone sat embedded—pulsing like a heart.

Something seemed sealed inside that gem, something alive. Each pulse released a suffocating pressure, and the space around it answered with faint cracking sounds, like reality itself was splintering.

Ethan didn’t step back.

He lifted his arm instead. Heavenly Demon Lightning rushed into his palm, the white bolts compressing and merging again and again until they became a blinding sphere of light.

The instant that sphere hit its limit, a huge dragon-shaped shadow tore free.

It wasn’t flesh. Not a real creature.

It was an energy form made purely of white lightning.

The lightning dragon coiled through the air, its massive body spanning the sky. Every swing of it made the whole space tremble. Its head dipped—almost like it could think—and its gaze locked onto Rak’tharion.

The moment the two forces faced each other, the entire world seemed to hold its breath.

Rak’tharion’s eyes went cold.

He didn’t waste another word. He simply raised the scepter and chopped it forward.

The blood-red gem exploded with dazzling light. A beam of energy, compressed to the absolute extreme, fired from the tip of the scepter—like a blade meant to pierce a world—shooting straight for Ethan.

Where it passed, space was torn open by force. Countless tiny cracks spread outward, and spatial turbulence sprayed from them, swallowing everything nearby.

Almost at the same time, Ethan moved.

The white lightning dragon in his grasp let out a furious roar and slammed head-on into the blood-red beam. When the two powers met, they didn’t explode immediately.

They locked in place in midair, deadlocked for a brief, terrifying moment.

The air stopped moving.

Then the impact detonated.

Power beyond description blasted outward. Space shattered inch by inch like brittle glass, fractures spiderwebbing instantly, ripping the sky into pieces.

Spatial turbulence went berserk. The sea below heaved into waves hundreds of feet high, like the entire world was struggling on the edge of collapse.

Rak’tharion’s pupils tightened.

He could feel it—Ethan’s power wasn’t just blocking.

It was eating his attack from the inside out.

That white lightning was actively devouring the surrounding energy. Worse, it was starting to pull on the power of the world itself, dragging it in and turning it into part of its own mass.

"That’s impossible..." Rak’tharion muttered.

But Ethan didn’t give him time to think.

The system’s analysis had just returned, and it confirmed one thing beyond any doubt—this Plane World wasn’t some ordinary pocket of space. It was the core node of a spatial passageway, the crucial hub that allowed Nexaris’s army to reach the Nether Sea at speed.

If this node wasn’t destroyed, then Nexaris’s forces would never stop coming.

That thought turned Ethan’s gaze completely ice-cold.

He stopped trying to control the power.

And let it all go.

Heavenly Demon Lightning burst out of him like a dam giving way. White lightning speared through heaven and earth, linking sky to sea.

The entire Plane World began to convulse. Its spatial structure started breaking down at terrifying speed, countless fragments of space getting sucked into a spiraling vortex of energy.

Rak’tharion finally understood what Ethan was doing.

"Are you insane?!" he roared.

But it was already too late.

Under the ultimate shock, the spatial node collapsed completely. The Plane World broke apart like a mirror being smashed, splitting into countless pieces. A gigantic spatial whirlpool formed, forcibly rejecting everything within it—hurling all existence outward.

The next moment, the world vanished.

When Ethan regained consciousness, he was floating above the Nether Sea. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

The sea wind brushed across him again. The sky had returned to its original color, as if everything that had just happened had never happened at all.

Rak’tharion appeared not far away as well. His breathing had gone rough, and for the first time, there was real anger in his eyes. He slowly lifted the scepter in his hand, and that blood-red energy gathered again.

"You destroyed the passage." His voice was low, dangerous. "You’re going to pay for that."

Before the last word even finished—

A blood-red beam shot out again.

Ethan snapped his arm up. Heavenly Demon Lightning surged, forming a defensive barrier in front of him. But this time, he could feel it immediately—his power was burning away fast.

Cracks began to spread across the surface of the Powered Combat Armor. Even the flow of white lightning turned jittery, unstable, like a current starting to stutter.

Rak’tharion clearly noticed.

His attacks grew vicious. Countless blood-red beams poured down like a storm, hammering Ethan’s defense over and over.

Each impact widened the cracks on the Powered Combat Armor by another notch.

Ethan’s breathing turned heavy. The power inside him drained at speed, and he could feel his limit rushing closer—close enough to taste.

Right as Rak’tharion prepared to deliver the killing blow—

The sky changed color.

A bolt of pure thunder descended from deep within the clouds.

It wasn’t ordinary lightning. It was made of something older, a force with a more ancient weight to it—carrying pure destructive authority as it slammed into Rak’tharion’s shoulder.

Flesh tore.

Energy collapsed.

Rak’tharion let out a shriek that didn’t sound like something a "higher being" should be capable of making. The thunderbolt punched straight through him, and blood and shattered energy sprayed out at the same time.

He jerked his head up, his face twisted with shock and fury.

"Who the hell are you?!"

Ethan whipped his gaze upward.

The sky had completely changed.

The roiling cloud cover was being ripped apart by streak after streak of pure white thunder. The glare was blinding—like the wrath of some ancient god, falling from the heavens without pause—turning the entire Nether Sea as bright as noon.

And it wasn’t mindless weather.

It had intent.

Every strike landed with brutal precision, smashing straight into the densest clusters of the Nexaris army.

At the center of it all, a slender figure floated in silence.

Nysera.

After Ethan kept the little girl by his side, he’d given her that name—Nysera, meaning Death Thunder.

White lightning coiled around her body. It wasn’t just clinging to her like an aura—it pulsed with her, rising and falling as naturally as breathing.

Her long hair drifted slowly inside the raging energy storm. Deep in her eyes, an almost emotionless white light flickered—like a living incarnation of thunder that had only just awakened from a long sleep.