Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

In the depths of the darkness, Vhalrath’s eyes widened.

The energy fluctuations the three of them left behind when they departed had caught its attention. It slowly lowered its dragon head, studying the faint traces that came and went inside the folds of space, trying to figure out where they’d gone.

And then—something with the exact same signature as before appeared beside it.

Purple-red energy, wrapped in darkness, less than half an arm’s length from its body.

Vhalrath swung a punch instantly.

Its claw smashed the surrounding space, and the recoil kicked its body backward in a long, violent leap.

Boom!

The spot it had been in got swallowed by purple-red light.

The energy sphere detonated. Flames spread outward, lighting up layered, overlapping space like stacked sheets of glass catching fire. The blast didn’t hit Vhalrath—but it left a glaringly obvious marker in the dark.

And it completely exposed the direction the three of them were moving.

Ethan stopped and looked back at Kaelira and Catheryn.

He lifted a hand and pointed toward the blast that was still expanding in the distance.

"You two do that?"

Both of them went quiet.

Kaelira poked Catheryn’s arm with a finger, basically ordering her to talk—right now.

Catheryn glanced at Kaelira, then finally gave a small nod.

Then she grabbed Kaelira’s hand.

Darkness and purple-red flame met again, and a new energy sphere formed between them. Once it stabilized, Catheryn held it up and offered it to Ethan like a tray.

Ethan lowered his gaze.

The surface of the sphere was pitch-black, its inner structure completely hidden. But the moment his senses brushed it, he felt the terrifying amount of power compressed inside.

Purple-red flame slammed over and over in the dark.

Each collision left heavier, deeper ripples trapped inside the ball.

Ethan extended one finger.

A white energy bead condensed at his fingertip, then slowly bored into the sphere Kaelira and Catheryn had made.

They both started to open their mouths to warn him—

—and the black sphere changed.

The chaotic pressure inside drew inward fast.

The purple-red flame stopped trying to break through the outer darkness, and Catheryn’s power stopped acting like pure suppression. The white energy wedged itself between them, building a stable circulation path.

The sphere’s surface turned calmer.

But the power inside didn’t decrease.

If anything, it became more compact. More restrained.

More horrifying.

And beyond that—something else stirred within it. A strange devouring force churned to life, tugging at the space near the sphere and pulling it, little by little, toward the center.

Catheryn stared at Ethan for a long time without looking away.

Kaelira glanced at the sphere, then at the three of them together.

A three-man mobile nuke squad—

was officially born.

They didn’t waste time talking.

Each of them brought their own "underlings" along as they advanced in Vhalrath’s direction.

Kaelira and Catheryn threw the newly finished sphere forward first. Behind Ethan, the Stellar Cores shifted formation, sliding ahead along both sides of the two spheres like an escort.

The moment the first volley left their hands, all three raised their arms again.

Purple-red fire. Pitch-black aura. White energy—converging.

The next-generation nuke began to take shape.

Vhalrath finally confirmed their trajectory.

They weren’t running.

They were coming to die.

Good.

It welcomed them.

"You in that much of a hurry?"

Vhalrath lifted a claw.

Space power spun in its palm, compressing into a new Stellar Core. With every rotation of the deep blue sphere, the space around it contracted toward the center, feeding it even more thrust.

Vhalrath flicked its claw forward.

The Stellar Core left its palm.

Space folded layer after layer behind it, accelerating it again and again. Its speed broke past third cosmic velocity in an instant, deep blue light stretching into a straight, needle-thin line as it shot toward the three of them.

Ethan shot Kaelira and Catheryn one look.

He gave a light nod.

Then another energy sphere sank into his body.

White light spread. His body broke apart with it. Black particles vanished from where he stood—and when they reappeared, they were plastered across the surface of the Stellar Core Vhalrath had just fired.

Lightning invaded immediately.

White arcs pierced the deep blue outer layer and raced along the internal flow of space power. Ethan didn’t compete with Vhalrath for total output—he simply rewrote the target in front of the Stellar Core.

The deep blue sphere began to drift mid-flight.

At first, it turned only a hair.

Then the entire flight path bent.

The Stellar Core abandoned Ethan’s group and swung around toward Vhalrath.

Vhalrath lifted a claw and scratched its head, genuinely confused.

A second ago it was a friend.

How did it turn into an enemy that fast?

Ethan had fully merged into the Stellar Core.

When the gap in strength wasn’t so absolute that you couldn’t even touch the structure, changing what was inside wasn’t hard for him. White lightning could ride along the direction of energy flow and infiltrate it—though against something like Vhalrath, he couldn’t finish the takeover in a single instant the way he could with lesser targets.

But changing one attack’s destination?

That was enough.

Kaelira and Catheryn weren’t about to get outdone.

Both of them leaned forward at the same time.

A phoenix projection spread behind Kaelira, purple-red flames licking along its wings. Behind Catheryn, darkness surged upward, forming a massive silhouette that swallowed light.

Anger lit in both their eyes.

The next moment, the two of them charged Vhalrath—each carrying a finished energy sphere.

Vhalrath watched the three figures in the distance, their silhouettes stretched long by speed.

Ethan, Kaelira, and Catheryn were still separated by a vast span, but the collision of their powers had already begun. Space compressed in layers, then snapped back after the energy passed through. Deep blue, purple-red, and pitch-black light flashed in alternating bursts, revealing a warped corridor through the directionless dark.

The black particles crossed Kaelira and Catheryn first.

Using the Stellar Core he’d hijacked, Ethan kept accelerating. His particle-form body flowed tight along the deep blue sphere’s surface. When the distance closed to the right range, those particles abruptly peeled off the Stellar Core and punched through the stacked layers of space around Vhalrath.

He was trying to beat the other two and get inside Vhalrath first.

When the black particles touched Vhalrath’s body, they weren’t repelled by scales, and they weren’t blocked by spatial force.

They slipped straight through the surface.

This time, Ethan got what he wanted—he entered the target’s body.

But what he saw wasn’t anything like what he’d expected.

There was no flesh. No bone. No structure you could call an energy core. In a dark void, doors stood in rows—one after another—each frame the exact same size, spaced only a short distance apart, stretching to the edge of his vision.

Ethan re-formed his body in front of the nearest door.

He reached out and pushed it open.

It didn’t lead deeper into Vhalrath.

Light poured through the crack. Ethan stepped out—and found himself back inside that enormous cage. The bone-littered ground, the dark gray enemies, the people still holding the shield—everything was right there in front of him, painfully clear.

He immediately stepped back through the doorway.

The door behind him shut again.

And with it, the cage vanished.