Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 979: The Hidden Core

Ethan quickly realized that if this dragged on, it was only going to get worse.

The battlefield around them was spiraling into chaos. Nysera and Idra were tied down by the summoned monsters, lightning and raw energy slamming together overhead hard enough to tear at the fabric of space.

Auri's defensive barrier was taking hit after hit.

And that firefly hanging back in the distance—calm as a conductor—kept summoning new monsters into the fight like it had all day.

If they didn't deal with it first, this battle would never end.

Ethan drew a deep breath.

The Heavenly Demon Lightning inside him spun up fast. White electricity spread from deep in his bones through his whole body, wrapping him like a faintly glowing neural web.

The air around him turned heavy. Space itself seemed to sense something about to erupt, and it began to tremble.

The next moment, Ethan vanished from where he stood.

A streak of white lightning ripped through space.

He shot toward the firefly at near-teleport speed, violent power compressing tight around his body.

His arm snapped forward. Heavenly Demon Lightning gathered along the edge of his fist, forming a thunder strike so dense it was almost solid.

Boom—

The blow landed instantly.

But the firefly didn't panic.

Its tiny body quivered once. A nearly transparent energy barrier unfolded around it in a blink.

It looked like an impossibly thin film of water—yet the instant Ethan's thunder hit, the barrier held with terrifying stability.

The impact erupted.

The lightning was blocked.

And then a powerful rebound force kicked back from inside the barrier.

Ethan felt his chest jolt. The force shoved him away like he'd been struck by a hammer, sending him skidding backward through the air for dozens of meters before he managed to stabilize.

He hung there midair, breathing a little harder.

The firefly was still floating in the same spot, barely displaced.

Ethan's brow slowly drew together.

He raised his hand again.

White lightning gathered into his palm. This time he didn't just throw power out—he compressed it, harder and harder.

The thunder in his hand spun and layered on itself until it formed an energy sphere so bright it was almost painful to look at.

The air around it began making faint cracking sounds.

The density had reached its limit.

"Go," Ethan murmured.

The sphere tore free, ripping through the air straight at the firefly.

The firefly drifted back the tiniest amount—like a speck of dust nudged by a current.

But even as it evaded, its minuscule mouth slowly opened.

A pure-white glow condensed inside.

The next instant, it fired back. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

The two forces collided in midair.

BOOM—!

The shockwave detonated outward. Fine cracks spread across space like shattered glass webbing in every direction.

Violent spatial turbulence sprayed from those fissures, sucking nearby lightning and energy into the rips.

Ethan could feel it clearly—this space was nearing its limit.

If they kept trading blows like this, the Plane World itself might tear open.

But he didn't stop.

He kept attacking.

One thunder strike after another whipped out, white lightning drawing continuous trails across the air.

The atmosphere bucked. Space warped. The entire battlefield felt like it was being dragged into a storm that kept swelling wider.

Yet as the seconds piled up, Ethan began to notice something he didn't like.

His power was draining.

And that firefly—

Showed no sign of weakening at all.

Ethan eased back a step.

He didn't launch another attack. Instead, he snapped open the system scan. Streams of data unfolded across his vision as layer after layer of energy structure got parsed and broken down.

The results made his expression turn grim.

This creature's energy structure was almost perfect.

Its energy circulation was stable. Its defensive layers were absurdly complete. Even its attack patterns matched its core like they were made for each other.

In plain terms—

It had almost no weaknesses.

Ethan's brow knitted tighter and tighter.

He started peeling apart its energy makeup layer by layer.

Seconds dragged by.

Finally—down in the deepest part of the scan—he caught something that didn't match.

Deep in the firefly's abdomen, hidden away, was a tiny white bead.

It was like a miniature core.

Every energy circulation route ultimately looped back to that point.

Ethan's eyes sharpened.

That was it. The energy core.

Destroy that, and everything ends.

The problem was—

That core was wrapped in layers and layers of protection.

A frontal attack could barely even graze it.

Ethan went quiet for a beat.

Then he slowly lifted a hand.

This time, he didn't build a massive blast.

Instead, he compressed everything he had into the smallest possible space.

White lightning stacked, spun, and crushed down tighter and tighter until it formed a disk only as wide as his palm.

An Energy Disc.

It didn't look like much, but as it rotated, it gave off a razor-edged pulse that made the air feel like it was being shaved apart.

Ethan didn't hesitate.

He snapped his arm.

The Energy Disc shot free.

It didn't charge straight in. Mid-flight, it kept adjusting its angle—like a weapon with a mind of its own—locking onto the firefly's abdomen.

The firefly tried to shift away.

The Energy Disc was faster.

In the next instant—

It kissed the firefly's barrier.

A screeching grind exploded into the air.

The disc howled as it spun, its sharp energy rim carving into the shield again and again. Lightning sparks sprayed everywhere. Space itself crackled with fine, tight fractures.

Finally—

A hairline split tore open in the barrier.

The Energy Disc slipped into the gap.

The next second, a tiny wound was cut into the firefly's belly, forced open by sheer cutting pressure.

The instant that thin tear appeared, Ethan knew the window was there.

The wound was microscopic—barely a line—but to his senses it felt like a door that had suddenly swung open.

The creature's energy circulation wobbled out of rhythm. And the snow-white bead hidden deep inside, tugged by the disrupted flow, exposed itself just a little.

Ethan didn't waste a breath.

His body turned into a bolt of white lightning.

The air ripped. Space warped for a split second under his speed.

Then he was in front of the firefly, his hand driving straight through the freshly cut opening.

His fingertips touched the core.

The sensation was… strange.

Cold—yet packed with a weight of power that made his skin prickle.

Ethan clenched hard.

He tore the snow-white energy bead out of the firefly's body by force.

The moment it left, the entire space trembled faintly.

Infernal Primordial Power inside the bead surged violently, like a miniature star suddenly exposed to open air.

Ethan glanced down at it.

His pupils tightened.

The density inside was way beyond what he'd expected. If he could fully fuse it into his own energy system, his Tier would probably jump again.

And the firefly—finally—lost its composure.

Its tiny body began to shake violently. The stable energy structure that had seemed perfect a moment ago started collapsing fast.

Because that bead wasn't just a battery.

It was its life core.

Without it, its very existence began to unravel.

Unless—

It could find a replacement core in a very short time.

The firefly's gaze whipped around in a frantic search.

Then it locked onto a hill in the distance. From deep under the rock layers there, a different kind of energy pulse faintly leaked out.

In the next moment, it beat its wings like it was trying to tear them off, its body turning into a white afterimage as it shot toward that hill.

It had only flown a few feet.

A flash of lightning appeared right in front of it.