Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Azrakar only sneered.

The nirvana energy inside him detonated at full force. The blue core on his body flared like a beacon, shooting a pillar of light into the sky. Between heaven and earth, it condensed into a gigantic phantom.

It was even more solid than before—like an ancient war god clad in Powered Combat Armor. It spread its arms and planted itself directly in front of Azrakar.

The energy spheres slammed into it.

The first one exploded, and the phantom only shuddered slightly.

The second and third burst right after. Transparent lightning skittered across the phantom’s surface, but it couldn’t tear through the outer layer of its defense.

When the remaining spheres all went off, the towering phantom merely took a single step back. Then it brought one hand down in a backhanded press, a crushing, world-covering force sweeping toward Ethan.

Ethan was forced onto the back foot immediately.

The moment that pressure hit him, his bones started to creak, like an invisible mountain grinding down from above. Transparent lightning kept erupting off his skin, but it only barely held the outer pressure in place—it couldn’t drive the phantom away.

His breathing turned ragged.

At this rate, his body would break under the weight sooner or later.

And then—Ataneya burst out.

She shot up from above the camp, twenty tails unfurling behind her. Fire-red energy sprayed from their tips in surging streams. She didn’t stop at Ethan’s side. She rose straight into the air and hung there, positioning herself directly in front of that gigantic phantom.

Her crimson power collided head-on.

Boom!

Ataneya’s flames crashed into Azrakar’s phantom face-to-face. Fire raced up the phantom’s arms, while blue nirvana energy pressed down in relentless waves. The two forces tangled—ripping, compressing, detonating—until the surrounding sky shivered and split with dense, spiderweb cracks.

Turbulent currents spewed from every fracture... only to be ground to pieces almost instantly by the clashing energies.

The pressure on Ethan finally eased.

He retreated several steps at once, then flipped his hand and pulled out a few energy cores, swallowing them down. The moment they hit his stomach, they dissolved fast—violent power flooding his meridians, patching the defensive line that had nearly been crushed apart.

But before he could fully stabilize, something else caught the corner of his eye.

Those battered survivors still hovering in the sky—one by one, they began releasing energy on a scale they hadn’t shown before.

The blue gems in their abdomens lit up at the same time. Their shattered Powered Combat Armor started repairing itself. Severed arms were wrapped in blue light. Half-destroyed bodies steadied. Even the ones whose auras had already dwindled to almost nothing... straightened up again under the surge of nirvana energy.

Ethan clenched his teeth.

Azrakar’s nirvana power could be shared with his subordinates.

That was the real nightmare.

This enemy army hadn’t been weak to begin with. As a whole, they were already a notch above Emerald Castle’s current forces. Earlier, they’d only failed to show their full oppressive strength because they’d just fled in defeat and everyone was injured.

Now, with nirvana energy boosting them, their wounds were healing, their auras were rising, and their combat state was snapping back toward its peak at a terrifying speed.

If they kept trading blows head-on, Emerald Castle would end up taking hits and bleeding out.

Ethan forced down the anger burning in his chest and swept his gaze across the battlefield.

Ataneya had Azrakar tied up for the moment, but Azrakar showed no sign of retreating. The enemy remnants were reforming their lines. Their Powered Combat Armor glowed again. The energy blockade was creeping toward the camp inch by inch. The Sky Fortress had already turned its guns, but the recovery speed on the other side was too fast—starting a full engagement now would only make their losses spiral.

Ethan issued an order without hesitation.

"Fall back into the cover!"

At the same time, he sent a voice transmission to Ataneya.

"Come back. Hold the camp first!"

Ataneya clearly hated it, but she didn’t disobey. She snapped her tails. Fire-red energy detonated high in the air, briefly forcing Azrakar’s gigantic phantom back. Then she withdrew in a blur, leading Emerald Castle’s forces into the temporary defensive structures they’d thrown together.

One defensive array after another activated.

Massive energy shields rose from the ground—first covering the outer perimeter of the camp, then folding upward and sealing together, until the entire Emerald Castle army was wrapped inside. Golden light and transparent radiance flowed across the surface, and at the base it connected directly to an underground energy spring.

This wasn’t an ordinary barrier.

It was linked to the mineral veins below, able to draw from the earth’s energy continuously to keep itself stable. As long as the vein’s power wasn’t drained dry, no matter how strong the enemy was, they couldn’t break in anytime soon.

Ten days. Half a month.

Without that kind of time, they weren’t getting through.

When the final section of the shield closed, most of the outside noise was cut off in an instant.

Ethan let out a long breath.

But the worry in his eyes didn’t fade.

Emerald Castle’s army was still too weak. If they were only dealing with a single powerhouse, they could kite and stall, look for openings. But Azrakar was the kind of enemy who could resurrect—and worse, share nirvana power with his troops. If the barrier fell, they’d have nowhere left to retreat. No ground to trade for time.

There was only one option left: use the Creature Dwellings they’d brought and mass-summon reinforcements.

Everyone in Emerald Castle understood the situation. Nobody dared waste a second. The goblin engineering crews cleared open ground at once. The Fallen Star Guard took control of the lines and kept order. Everyone else pulled out every Creature Dwelling they had and set them up across the interior of the camp.

One by one, the Creature Dwellings lit up.

Summoning array patterns spread across the ground. Energy cores were tossed in, and new units began to condense out of the glow. Each time another batch of soldiers appeared, the suffocating pressure inside the camp eased a little.

Ethan’s expression didn’t.

Their stored energy was limited.

Creature Dwellings could summon subordinates, but they couldn’t run forever. And the real problem was the outer defensive shield—it guzzled energy too. The moment their reserves ran dry, the shield would collapse outright, and the camp would be laid bare in front of Azrakar and that army.

Ethan stood just inside the barrier and looked up at the blue light flickering beyond it.

Right as that thought tightened in his chest, a heaven-shaking roar slammed into the shield from outside.

Boom!

The whole camp jolted.

Then several more violent energy waves crashed through the barrier’s surface. Ripples spread across it in huge rings, and even the summoning arrays inside the camp flickered for a moment, disrupted by the impact.

The attack had started.

Ethan’s breathing sped up immediately.

That thunder outside wasn’t some stray aftershock. That kind of force was being hammered into the shield again and again, shaking the entire camp. The summoning patterns on the ground kept strobing. Even the freshly formed units were pressed unsteady, forced to brace themselves just to stay upright.

Someone out there was hitting them with everything they had.

Ethan forced himself to calm down. He raised a hand and poured his own energy into the defensive barrier. Transparent lightning raced along the inner wall, then spread upward—until an energy "mirror," like a floating screen, opened in midair.

The moment it lit, everything outside the shield snapped into view.

Chaos.

Azrakar’s army—those troops that had just regained their strength—was no longer holding a neat, crushing formation. They were locked in a brutal melee around the camp’s perimeter. A second army had charged in from the flank, seemingly out of nowhere, and the sky outside was a wreck of colliding beams, weapon impacts, and armor detonations—so violent it looked like the air itself was being blasted apart in chunks.

Rumble!

Rumble!

Rumble!

Every time an explosion went off, the light-screen trembled with it, like the camp was watching the world outside shake itself to pieces.