Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan had no intention of standing there and waiting to die.

He hurled the energy orb forward. White lightning raced across its surface as it shot toward the sword that had breached his shield. But the moment he released it, he realized the blade was coming in at the wrong angle and immediately ducked.

The orb skimmed the inside of the shield overhead. The curved barrier deflected it to the side, sending it straight into the incoming blade.

To Ethan’s surprise, Valric didn’t press the sword any farther.

The point stopped just inside the shield, only inches from Ethan’s body. Valric’s free hand was already raised, palm facing him. Dense golden threads poured from between his fingers, slipped through the breach, and wound toward Ethan’s wrists, shoulders, waist, and legs.

The deflected energy orb struck Valric’s palm.

It didn’t explode.

The white energy sank directly into his body, leaving only a ring of spreading electricity behind. Valric didn’t even flinch. More phantom swords had already formed in the air behind him, their points shifting in unison before striking Ethan’s shield in wave after wave.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Every impact drove a sharp dent into the white barrier. The relentless barrage blurred into one continuous assault. Cracks spread outward from the existing breach, and the shield’s glow began to flicker.

Valric closed his fingers.

The golden threads around Ethan snapped taut, wrenching his arms and legs in different directions. Pinned in the center of the shield, Ethan could no longer duck out of the way.

The final wave of phantom swords fell, all of them hammering the same point.

The white shield shattered.

Valric held his sword sideways and pushed his wrist forward. The point pierced the scattering white light and drove straight toward Ethan’s throat. The air displaced by its edge sliced through his collar before the blade even reached him.

Ethan neither struggled nor dodged.

He glanced at the sword point closing in on his throat, then raised his eyes to meet Valric’s golden gaze.

"You really don’t hold back."

The corner of Ethan’s mouth lifted. A rapid scraping sound came from inside his body.

"Then I guess I can stop pretending too!"

Golden light shone through his chest and arms. Threads that had originally belonged to Valric suddenly shot back out of Ethan’s body.

They ignored Valric’s sword hand. Instead, they crossed in front of Ethan’s neck and wrapped around the blade at point-blank range.

The first thread caught the tip. The second locked around the spine. More golden strands surged out and tightened layer by layer, stopping the sword less than a finger’s width from Ethan’s throat.

Valric’s pupils contracted.

He clearly hadn’t expected the threads inside Ethan’s body to turn against him. But the fight gave him no time to consider how it had happened.

He immediately released the hilt and spread his arms behind him. More golden threads crossed behind his shoulders, rapidly weaving themselves into a pair of wings.

As the wings opened, the air pushed the surrounding yellow sand outward in a ring.

Valric pitched forward. His wings drove him toward Ethan just above the ground.

The threads extending from Ethan’s body shot out to meet him. The two masses collided in midair, tangling and tightening around each other until they formed an ever-expanding ball of golden thread.

Their friction produced a shriek that stabbed at the ears.

Using the brief deadlock as cover, Valric climbed higher. His golden wings carried him into the sky. He looked down at the tangled threads under Ethan’s control, drew a fingertip across his palm, and severed his connection to them.

With no more power feeding them, the disconnected threads began drifting downward.

A white energy orb had already formed in Ethan’s hand. He aimed at the densest part of the tangle and sent the orb inside.

Boom!

Lightning erupted from within the mass, snapping every thread straight. Instead of resisting Ethan, even more of them connected to his consciousness. The scattered golden threads began responding to his control, and there were far more than before.

He slowly turned his fingers.

The threads filling the air changed direction. Their tips rose one after another until every strand pointed toward Valric.

Then they tore through the smoke left by the explosion and pursued him from different heights.

Valric beat his woven wings and changed direction repeatedly in midair. He had barely dodged several threads from the right when more crossed in from the lower left to block his path.

He looked back.

The golden tide behind him hadn’t thinned at all. If anything, it was growing denser the longer the chase continued.

Worse, his sword was still on the ground.

This time, Ethan was in no hurry to pursue him. He strolled over to the fallen weapon as the threads hanging beside him wrapped around its hilt and pulled it from the sand.

The blade spun several times in the air, flinging off the sand clinging to it. Then the threads sent it flying toward Valric.

"Catch!"

Ethan looked up at Valric, who was still dodging the golden threads. His voice carried through the chaos of colliding strands.

"Let me see what you can really do!"

The sword flew through a gap in the threads and soared into the sky.

This time, Ethan was the one in control.

What he hadn’t expected was the deliberately muffled sound of footsteps behind him the moment he returned the sword.

Auri and the other three little girls were sneaking closer, all four bent low. They thought the smoke and dust filling the battlefield concealed them, unaware that Ethan had already turned around.

He was about to speak when all four stopped at once.

"Dad, I’m here!" Auri blurted out first. She pointed toward the churning cloud of dust on the other side. "There’s too much dust over there, so I came to help!"

The other three little girls nodded repeatedly.

"Big Brother..."

Ethan opened his mouth, but before he could reprimand them, all four girls ran toward him.

Light shone from their bodies one after another. The instant they touched Ethan, the light contracted and merged directly into him.

Ethan looked down at the glow still fading from his chest and finally let out a sigh.

"You four... He was already hard enough to deal with. Now..."

High above, Valric ignored the interruption below.

All his attention remained fixed on the golden threads pursuing him. As his sword approached, he shot out a thread that wrapped precisely around the hilt, then pulled hard.

The sword slid along the thread and into his hand. Valric immediately folded his wings and forced himself to a stop in midair.

He turned, gripped the sword in both hands, and slashed horizontally from the side.

The blade swept out a complete arc of light, cutting from the foremost golden threads all the way through those behind them. The pursuing strands snapped one after another. The severed sections lost control and scattered, drifting slowly toward the ground.

Valric descended with them and planted both feet in the yellow sand.

Watching from nearby, Ethan nodded in approval and even gave him a light round of applause.

Then he tossed the energy orb in his other hand.

Valric had barely drawn a breath when the white orb passed through the falling threads and struck him head-on.

The explosion spread across his armor, and the impact kicked up a ring of sand. At the same time, several golden threads that hadn’t completely lost control wrapped around his head from behind, blocking part of his vision.

Valric tightened his grip on the sword and slashed with all his strength toward Ethan.

The sword energy carved through the dust ahead, splitting the yellow sand into two rolling walls along a perfectly straight line. Golden wings unfolded behind Valric once more and carried him forward just above the ground.

Through the rising curtain of sand, the two faced each other again.

Their battle returned to a direct clash.

The situation on the other battlefield was no easier.

Eldran’s control over the golden threads was clearly far more refined than Valric’s. No matter how many pieces Andona cut a thread into, every segment continued moving with his fingers. Two severed ends only had to draw close in midair before they aligned on their own. Golden light flashed across the break, and the thread became whole again.

Andona had already destroyed several waves, but every time her blade cut through them, the severed strands counterattacked from a different angle.

A segment lying limp on the ground one moment would snake across the sand toward her ankle the next. Sections knocked high into the air would immediately double back and stab at weaker points in her shield.

She had to keep turning her blade, constantly shifting between offense and defense.

Elira joined the battle as well.

The Divine Sovereign Moth’s wings spread fully behind her. The eyes across their surfaces opened one by one, and strange runes lit up along their patterns.

Multicolored lasers fired from different points and converged in midair, forming a broader beam that swept head-on through the mass of golden threads.

Each thread was thin, but once the beam covered a wide enough area, Eldran could no longer repair them as quickly as they were being erased. Wherever the beam passed, the golden strands heated until they glowed, then melted through the middle and fell toward the sand as tiny motes of light.