Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 988: The One Who Devours Fire

Ethan slammed into the ant leader midair.

Fists, claws, lightning, red flame—

The two forces collided violently in the sky.

Every impact kicked up a fresh energy storm.

Ethan realized something almost immediately.

This ant leader…

It wasn't afraid of Heavenly Demon Lightning at all.

His thunder was supposed to be one of the most extreme energies in existence, but against this thing, it wasn't giving him anything close to a crushing advantage.

Worse, the enemy's red power was downright eerie.

Buried inside it was an incredibly dense Infernal aura—

Power from the abyss.

Scorching. Lethal.

Whenever the red energy smashed into his white lightning, the air would actually ignite for a split second, like reality itself was being used as kindling.

For the first time in a long while, Ethan felt that familiar pressure of a fight that could go bad.

He drew a deep breath.

Thunder roared through his body, cycling faster and faster.

The Powered Combat Armor spiked its output. White lightning spilled off him in sheets.

He stopped holding back.

All of it—released at once.

White lightning churned across the sky like a storm, slamming into the deep-crimson Infernal power again and again.

The two figures rammed into each other in midair.

Once. Twice. Three times…

Even Ethan lost count of how many exchanges they'd traded.

And still, there was no winner.

A dangerous thought surfaced in Ethan's mind.

Right now, he wasn't fused with any external power.

He was relying purely on his own energy—plus the armor's amplification—to fight this Tier 33 ant leader head-on.

And fighting like that—

Cost too much.

As time dragged on, he could feel his reserves dropping fast.

If this kept turning into a drawn-out slugfest…

The ending could get ugly.

The battle above had fallen into a deadlock.

White thunder and deep-red energy crashed together nonstop. Each collision sent violent turbulence ripping outward, making the air ripple like water.

Ethan flickered between arcs of lightning, Heavenly Demon Lightning rolling around him, while the ant leader stayed wrapped in thick red power like a living blaze.

They'd been clashing for ages, and neither side could force a breakthrough.

Ethan's mind was already running calculations at full speed. He could clearly feel his energy continuing to bleed away.

The Powered Combat Armor was still stable, but if the fight kept stalling, it would be extremely bad for him.

He was just thinking about how to find an opening—

When a figure suddenly shot past him from behind.

Slim, fast—so fast it looked like a streak.

Ethan whipped his head around.

"Ataneya!"

A strange energy spread rapidly through the sky.

Ataneya hovered in midair, and the fox tails behind her unfurled one by one. At first there were only a few, but as her power poured out, the tails bloomed open like a flower opening in fast motion.

Ten. Twelve. Fifteen…

Finally—

A full twenty tails spread behind her.

Each one was layered with silvery-white energy markings, swaying slowly in the air—graceful, and dangerous.

Only then did Ethan truly register it: after this chain of wars, Ataneya's strength had changed drastically.

Her aura was already close to Tier 33.

She'd reached the peak of Tier 32.

But Ethan also knew her power wasn't like a normal cultivator's, something you could simply stack higher with ordinary energy.

What Ataneya needed was an extremely special kind of force.

With only standard energy, breaking into Tier 33 would be almost impossible for her.

Yet right now, her eyes were unnaturally bright—

Like a hunter finally spotting the exact prey she'd been waiting for.

The ant leader clearly noticed her too.

When it saw a girl whose aura was obviously weaker charging into the battlefield, a trace of disdain flashed through its compound eyes.

It didn't even dodge.

Red energy gathered instantly in its hand.

In the next moment, that power shaped itself into a gigantic ant phantom in midair.

The projection was dozens of meters tall, like a moving mountain.

As the ant leader swung its arm, the phantom crashed down.

Violent red energy erupted across the sky.

It was like the heavens had been covered in fire—overwhelming crimson power pressed down on Ataneya in a tidal wave.

Ethan's heart clenched hard.

He'd just felt the strength of that power firsthand.

Even for him, taking an attack like that head-on was insanely dangerous.

And Ataneya—

Just as Ethan was about to rush in to back her up, something unexpected happened.

The red energy in the sky suddenly shifted.

That wild, outward-surging power… started to change direction, like it had been caught by some invisible attraction and yanked inward toward a single point.

Then—

It began to vanish.

It wasn't being destroyed.

It was being absorbed.

The entire battlefield went quiet in an instant.

Everyone looked up at the sky.

The ant leader's compound eyes shrank.

He watched, helpless, as the energy he'd released disappeared bit by bit.

Those flame-like red waves were swallowed by something even stranger, like they were being sucked into an unseen black hole.

When the last trace of crimson faded, Ataneya's figure reappeared at the center of the sky.

She hovered there, perfectly still.

Her aura had clearly grown stronger.

And even more shocking—among the twenty tails behind her, two had changed.

Those two tails were no longer silver-white.

They were deep red—

Like they'd been lit from within by fire.

A thrilled smile curved across Ataneya's face.

It was innocent.

And it was dangerous.

"Perfect," she said, her voice carrying across the sky.

"This Inferno flame energy…"

"Give it all to me."

The moment she finished speaking, her body turned into an afterimage.

Only a twisted trail in space remained where she'd been.

The next second, she was right in front of the ant leader.

The ant leader finally realized something was wrong.

Its compound eyes widened violently.

But it was too late to retreat.

All it could do was forcefully mobilize its red energy again, trying to meet her head-on.

The two forces slammed together in midair.

BOOM—!

A brutal shockwave spread out instantly, shaking loose huge chunks of stone from the wall.

But this time, the fight didn't last long.

That once-violent red power began to weaken the instant it touched Ataneya—

Like it was being pulled into some invisible abyss.

Ataneya's body became the center point.

Streams of red energy poured into her nonstop.

The ant leader finally understood what it was seeing.

Its compound eyes snapped wider.

"You…"

For the first time, fear entered its voice.

"You are—"

"Shadow Fox!"