Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 987: The City Without a King

White lightning drifted through the air like a slow swarm, countless tiny electric snakes circling Ethan's body.

The man who'd been blasted away had just hauled himself off the ground. Before he could gather his energy again, a terrifying pressure crashed down from above. The air tightened. He looked up on instinct—

And only caught a blur cutting across his vision.

In the next instant, Ethan was right in front of him.

He moved so fast he barely left a trace, like space itself had folded. By the time the man realized what was happening, a hand was already locked around his throat like a steel vise, lifting him clean off the ground.

His breath stopped.

Ethan wasn't even squeezing, but the pressure felt like a mountain pressing into his windpipe, crushing the air out of him. White lightning flowed along Ethan's arm, arcs snapping and jumping. Every flicker made the air pop with tiny, sharp detonations.

All the Nexaris soldiers around them froze.

They were still in their encirclement formation, but not a single one dared step forward now.

Because everyone could feel it—power rolling out of Ethan and climbing higher and higher, the kind of suffocating force that could grind an entire army into dust.

Ethan lowered his gaze to the man dangling from his hand.

His eyes were calm and cold, like he was looking at something that didn't matter.

"Listen carefully."

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an unquestionable weight.

"The Nexaris Overlord Xarathos is dead."

The moment the words fell, even the air seemed to shiver.

The man's pupils contracted hard.

Before he could even process what that meant, Ethan kept going.

"From now on, this place doesn't belong to Nexaris anymore."

Ethan's arm lifted slightly. White lightning spread fast through the air.

"It belongs to Emerald Castle."

The man's breathing turned ragged.

He tried to speak, but his throat was locked tight. Only broken, choking sounds came out.

Ethan looked at him without a hint of hesitation.

"From this moment on, you have two choices."

His fingers tightened just a little.

The man's face went pale instantly.

"Become my subordinate."

Ethan's voice turned even colder.

"Or—"

"Die."

The air went dead silent.

The man's mind was almost blank.

He had no idea what was happening. Xarathos dead? Nexaris losing control? Emerald Castle taking the capital?

The information hit like back-to-back thunderclaps, exploding in his skull.

But he didn't get time to react.

Ethan wasn't going to wait.

The next second, a savage force burst from Ethan's body.

White lightning surged down his arm. Arcs wrapped around the man's neck like countless blades.

A screeching thunderclap ripped through the air.

Crack.

He didn't even have time to scream. His body jerked violently—

And then Ethan twisted his wrist.

The man's head was wrenched off, torn free.

The blood didn't even get a chance to spray. It was instantly flash-vaporized by the lightning into pale white mist.

Ethan casually tossed the corpse to the ground.

The whole thing took only a few seconds.

But those few seconds were enough to snap every last piece of resolve in the Nexaris soldiers watching.

They'd still been hesitating. But the moment they saw their commander killed that easily, the final shred of courage in their hearts vanished.

Fear spread like a plague.

One soldier dropped to his knees first.

Then a second. A third.

In only a few seconds, the entire street was packed with kneeling bodies.

The Nexaris soldiers who'd been ready to fight just moments ago now had their heads down, shaking uncontrollably.

"Don't kill us!"

"We surrender!"

"We'll swear loyalty!"

Voices overlapped in a messy chorus.

None of them even dared look up at Ethan.

Ethan didn't bother with the Nexaris soldiers kneeling on the ground.

He flicked them a flat glance, then lifted a hand and made a small shooing motion, telling them to get out of the way.

They practically jumped aside on instinct, opening a path down the middle. Not a single one dared raise their head and meet his eyes.

Ethan turned and headed deeper into the capital, unhurried.

But when he truly stepped into the palace at the city's center, even he slowed to a stop.

The entire structure was unbelievable in scale. Massive black-and-gold pillars rose from the floor all the way to the ceiling, each one carved with intricate, ancient energy patterns.

The dome overhead was hundreds of feet high. Suspended in the air were ring after ring of enormous energy halos, rotating slowly and washing the hall in a soft, eerie red glow.

Ethan realized something almost immediately.

This palace was even bigger than Emerald Castle's main city.

And it wasn't just size.

The tech and energy architecture here was clearly more complex—more layered.

"Yeah… Nexaris has a deeper foundation than I thought," Ethan murmured.

He was about to push farther in when—

A huge tremor rolled in from outside the city.

Rumble—!

The sound churned through the air like thunder. The palace itself shivered.

Ethan's expression tightened.

He turned on instinct, Heavenly Demon Lightning stirring inside him in the same breath.

"Go see."

Before the words even finished leaving his mouth, the goblin troops behind him were already moving.

Ethan led them out of the palace at a run.

When he reached the area near the wall, what he saw made his pupils contract.

The outer wall of the city was crawling with enormous ants—packed so densely it looked like the stone itself had turned alive.

Each ant was massive, several meters tall, its black-and-red carapace throwing off a cold metallic sheen under the sunlight.

Their razor limbs dug into the wall as they climbed, surging upward like a tide.

Worse— 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The aura coming off them was brutal.

Violent red energy saturated the air, flowing between the ant legion like living flame until even the sky took on a faint, dark-red tint.

Ethan's gaze snapped to the foremost figure.

One ant stood out immediately.

It was bigger than the rest, its shell a deeper, darker crimson. Six eyes glittered like burning gemstones. And the pressure boiling off it had already reached Tier 33.

Red energy poured from its body like a volcanic plume, blasting up toward the sky.

Ethan narrowed his eyes.

Without drawing attention to it, he stepped back once.

Then—

Boom.

A terrifying aura erupted out of him.

Heavenly Demon Lightning exploded across the sky.

White thunder crashed down like a waterfall, slamming straight into the ant legion clinging to the wall.

BOOM!

More than a dozen ants were blown apart before they could even react, shredded into chunks on the spot.

The air filled instantly with the harsh stink of scorching shell and burnt flesh.

The Tier 33 ant leader snapped its head up.

All six compound eyes locked onto Ethan at the same time.

The next second, it sprang.

Violent red energy condensed inside it in a flash, then shaped itself into a gigantic energy saber.

The blade stretched nearly a hundred feet, burning with a deep crimson glow.

The ant leader's voice detonated through the air.

"You invaders!"

It roared as it swung the saber down.

"You dare break into Nexaris's capital!"

The blade fell.

Red power compressed madly along its edge, so heavy it forced fractures into space itself.

Ethan didn't retreat.

His face stayed calm.

He just raised a hand and flicked it lightly.

The next instant, white lightning surged from his palm like a rising tide, blasting up to meet the descending red saber.

BOOOOM—!

At the moment they collided, space warped as if someone had twisted it.

The air shook violently.

The wall began to collapse under the shockwave, huge slabs of stone and metal breaking free and crashing down from above.

But it wasn't over.

The instant the first impact faded, the two figures shot toward each other at the same time.