Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan clenched his fist.

White lightning snapped between his fingers in rapid bursts, but the voices still wouldn’t stop.

"Stop."

He lifted his head, eyes locked on the central brain.

The screaming continued.

"I said stop!"

Ethan’s voice detonated along with his power.

The shockwave rolled outward from his body. It slammed into the nearest mirror wall—then raced along the seams where the mirrors connected, spreading through the entire mirrored maze in an instant.

Crack!

The first mirror split from the center.

Then the second. The third.

The whole mirror-room collapsed at once. Countless reflected images were severed by the spreading fractures. Shards tore free from the walls and ceiling—then, before they could even hit the floor, the force wave pulverized them into smaller fragments.

The central brain stopped twitching.

The screaming vanished with it.

At last, silence.

But behind the shattered mirrors, there wasn’t an empty wall.

There were eyes.

Thousands upon thousands of them, packed into the darkness—some stretched wide open, some narrowed to thin slits. Every pupil rotated toward Ethan, staring without blinking, without flinching.

Annoying.

A nameless irritation rose out of Ethan’s chest, hot and immediate.

He lifted his right hand. The white lightning in his palm had already condensed—one push forward and he could drive it straight into the brain.

But his hand stopped halfway.

The arcs tightened and shrank in his grip, refusing to leave.

Ethan hesitated.

He was afraid that if he sent that power in, something would happen to him—something he couldn’t predict.

The shadow had been able to assimilate him through contact.

This brain had manufactured endless replicas and could inject sound straight into his consciousness. If his white lightning became its pathway into him, the consequences could be worse than any physical wound.

The fear didn’t explode into panic.

It just pinned his arm in place, making him unable to move forward.

He stood there, stuck, not knowing what to do next.

The central brain didn’t attack either.

After it stopped twitching, it simply hung there in silence. The eyes around it kept watching Ethan. The room held nothing but the faint crackle of white lightning.

One man. One brain.

Waiting in the quiet.

Meanwhile, up in the Surface Layer, the fight was slipping out of control.

Ataneya’s tails swept at her replica again.

The gray-black shadow twisted aside. Its tail slammed into the ground and bounced, changing direction. Ataneya tried to pull her power back—but the agitation inside her body beat her judgment to the punch.

One fox tail scythed across the battlefield and lashed hard toward the rear.

That was where Feylora was holding the green shield steady.

Seraphine moved in time, throwing herself between them. A deep-gold barrier flared from in front of her palm, taking the blow head-on.

Bang!

The gold light buckled violently.

Feylora wasn’t hit, but worry tightened her expression.

Because it wasn’t the first time.

Ataneya’s attacks were starting to lose direction. Everyone else’s power was sliding the same way—control thinning, edges fraying. If the battle continued like this, they’d start hurting each other before they finished off a single replica.

Seraphine abandoned her tangle with her own shadow.

A pale-gold shield rose around her as she lifted on a ring of light, flying higher. The higher she climbed, the more layers of deep-gold radiance she forced out of her body.

Bright color returned to the gray, dead space.

The first beam of holy light fell and hit Ataneya.

Then it spread, covering every ally.

Darkness was pushed away from their bodies, and the chaotic negative emotions were briefly suppressed under the glow. Ragged breathing steadied. Attacks stuttered—pausing for a fraction of a second.

But the moment Seraphine’s holy light weakened even slightly, the people below snapped right back toward frenzy.

Queen Elowen raised a hand, trying to use her power—one that could freeze the soul of all things—to restrain everything at once.

Cold spread from her palm. Enemies and allies alike slowed. But the clarity in her eyes also began to drain away fast. The frost stopped distinguishing targets, crawling across the ground toward every living thing.

Ataneya’s tails kept hammering the space around her.

Twenty-four tails—sometimes striking replicas, sometimes slamming empty ground and shields. She clearly knew she was losing control... and yet she couldn’t make all of them stop at once.

Everyone’s thoughts were diverging.

Someone wanted to destroy everything in sight.

Someone wanted to freeze all life.

Someone wanted darkness to swallow the entire cage.

Those bizarre impulses collided and churned in the space between them.

If all their minds could be unified, the chaos would vanish.

Everyone would share the same awareness, the same judgment—no arguments, no betrayal. Maybe even shared immortality, knowledge, and endless power.

The brain in the Inverted Layer was doing exactly that.

Vhalrath was it.

Those replicas were it.

Any lifeform covered by its space, any consciousness it managed to invade, could eventually become part of it.

As long as its space spread somewhere, it could become everyone there.

It was him.

He was it.

It should have been a grand unification.

But that dream had been ruined—completely—by Vhalrath’s curiosity, so intense it had practically spiraled out of control.

That dragon kept stirring up space, snatching new life, building games... and dragging more and more uncontrollable power into this place.

Now the brain had already calculated the ending.

It was about to disappear.

About to die.

But even in death, it refused to go quietly.

If it was doomed to be a moth diving into flame, then it would make this death spectacular.

At that moment, the connection between the Surface Layer and the Inverted Layer shifted.

The boundary that had been hard as iron grew smooth... until it became a single enormous mirror.

Standing below, Ethan looked up through the mirror overhead and saw his companions’ condition.

Everyone’s movements were frantic and messy now.

Thank God Seraphine was still high above, holding the holy light. Without those golden rings constantly suppressing the negativity, there was no telling what the scene above would turn into.

Ethan pulled his gaze back down.

He stared hard at the central brain.

The mirrored rooms were already destroyed by his roar. All that remained were jagged broken edges—and the eyes hiding behind them.

The brain started twitching again.

Small movements.

A faint power leaked out from deep within its folds—no light, no sound. It crawled forward along the floor and through the air, inching toward Ethan like something trying not to be noticed.

If this were the Ethan from before, that power might’ve invaded him before he even realized it—and the "transformation" would’ve begun.

But Lily was already fused with him.

The moment that faint power touched the outer edge of his presence, it was blocked by white aura. There was no explosion—only a thin, pale ripple spreading between them.

Ethan felt it.

He didn’t destroy it immediately.

He still wanted to see what this brain was planning to do.

Then, in the very next instant, the scene in front of him changed.

The bright laboratory—and the gigantic brain—vanished at the same time.