Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Ethan seized the opening and tossed out a plain, unremarkable white lightning sphere.

It hit the wind blast dead-on.

The reverse winds around it vanished completely, and the core was exposed for everyone to see. Ethan lifted a hand, trying to pull the wind blast closer so he could examine its structure up close.

That was when it went wrong.

The wind blast started to tremble—wildly, like something was waking up inside it.

Ethan dropped control immediately. Queen Elowen raised her hand too, sending an ice sphere to collide with it. Extreme cold spread across the wind blast’s surface, locking it in place. The green wind shell dispersed completely, leaving only the core hovering there—stupidly still.

Seraphine sensed the shift.

She glanced at Elowen in the center, then released power without holding anything back. Light flared in her palm, star-bright. A sacred energy sphere formed—and she slammed it into the ground with one strike.

A deep-gold shield surged up.

It closed from the ground upward, sealing everyone inside. Queen Elowen stepped into the shield without being told, no longer staying in the center.

Ethan tried to force the wind blast to detonate.

Nothing.

The wind blast rose higher and higher. When it was about to reach the top, Ethan condensed a lightning orb and fired it straight into the wind blast’s interior.

Chaotic forces crashed together inside.

With the wind blast’s own stored charge amplifying it, everything finally released. A violent pressure wave crushed downward from above. Even the deep-gold shield was shoved backward a few feet, heavy ripples pounding across its surface.

And beyond the first strike—

Reverse wind appeared again.

It hovered at the edge of the explosion like a wall that had been waiting all along, ready to "catch" them wherever the blast tried to throw them.

Ethan wasn’t giving it that chance.

He slammed a white lightning sphere into his own body. Black particles erupted—and he vanished from everyone’s sight.

Black particulate form wasn’t only for dodging.

Ethan slipped cleanly into the wind blast’s interior.

Only then did he see the truth: the wind blast was made of two forces.

One was pure wind energy.

The other... was the spatial-temporal energy he knew all too well.

They overlapped at the core—one sustaining the wind blast’s speed, the other supporting its spatial traction, the way it pulled and warped distance.

The forces were laid out right in front of him.

And if it could be taken—

Why wouldn’t he take it?

Outside, golden wings appeared behind Queen Seraphine.

She braced the deep-gold shield with her wings, carving out an escape path from top to bottom. Desert Queen Kaelira had already been waiting—purple-red energy spheres flared at her side, then blasted outward, smashing the reverse-wind wall to pieces.

Queen Seraphine led the group out of the ruin.

Power vented violently from inside, shredding everything nearby. Broken pillars rolled. Fractured walls were ripped into the air. The magic formation lights on the ground flashed repeatedly, then dimmed layer by layer under the wind pressure.

THOOM!

THOOM!

THOOM!

The wind blast raged inside the ruin like it was throwing a tantrum. Wave after wave of pressure exploded outward, shaking the whole structure with constant, booming tremors.

Then, in just a few seconds—

It all vanished.

Ethan reappeared in front of them, holding the wind blast in his hand.

It wasn’t as violent as before, but dense wind aura still churned inside. The moment Ethan steadied himself, a ring of wind pressure rippled off the sphere—soft, but forceful—pushing everyone back toward the ruin. Gravel lifted and rolled along the broken stairs, then got flung into the corners of the walls.

They’d wanted to use that gap to rest.

But the second they stepped back inside, several more wind blasts formed around them.

They didn’t attack right away.

They just hovered quietly in the air, surrounding the group. Their green cores rotated slowly, wind layers circling them in lazy rings. They looked less like assassins... and more like guards. Silent attendants.

Down on the lower eight floors, Seraphina and Andona were still fighting.

Their coordination was already smooth.

Andona fully spread her twenty pairs of golden wings, blade in hand, eyes locked on the wind-made creature as it continued to condense into shape. Divine Power flowed out along her feathers, etching dense golden lines across the ground like a sacred circuit.

Seraphina adjusted her dragon body to the maximum size the ruin could handle.

Her massive frame coiled in the narrow space, claws digging into stone. Heat pulsed in her throat, bright and building. The moment the wind creature showed even the smallest opening, she’d breathe dragonfire and burn straight through it.

The enemy was only mid Tier 35—

—and it was a nightmare anyway.

Its power got scattered over and over, yet it always revived. Worse, it moved with speed that felt beyond space. Its core was exposed, a green gem suspended in the center of its wind body, but every time Seraphina or Andona tried to strike it, layers of reverse wind rose up—weakening, bending, and stripping away their attacks until everything died just short of the core.

And it kept summoning minions.

One wind blast after another appeared beside it, then zipped around the battlefield at insane speed. They didn’t follow any pattern—diving from above one second, skimming the ground the next, then slamming toward the two of them from behind.

Andona had to raise a golden shield to block the ambushes.

Seraphina stood inside the shield, staring at the annoying little wind balls as they whipped around like a swarm of buzzing insects.

"You guys want to know what it feels like to have dragonfire burn through your whole body?"

Too bad.

These wind constructs didn’t feel pain.

They kept summoning wind blasts and hammering the shield. Every impact sent a ripple across the golden barrier. It couldn’t break through—but it was maddening.

Andona watched Seraphina’s irritation build, then calmly lowered the shield.

The next instant, she rose into the air, blade angled downward, Divine Power pouring off the edge like a waterfall.

"Blade in hand—your harassment becomes my judgment."

A radiant formation array flared into existence on the ground.

Golden patterns spread from under Andona’s feet, covering the wind creature ahead. As the array lit, sacred columns of light erupted upward, executing the wind constructs that had gotten too bold—

—and, incidentally, improving Seraphina’s mood.

Seraphina wasn’t about to lose the spotlight.

Dragonfire flooded across the entire floor. The cold stone quickly glowed red-hot. Heat rolled upward, warping the surrounding air hard enough to make the wind twist. The wind constructs tried to blow the flames away, but the fire moved like it had a mind of its own—slithering against the airflow and crawling into their bodies.

Even the wind blasts reacted.

One by one, they broke off their attack routes and returned to their "center."

A massive wind core.

The green core hovered in midair, quietly drawing in the power from those wind blasts. Each smaller wind blast was pulled toward it—outer wind layers drained away—while the green light inside the core thickened, growing darker and richer.

But it also pulled the flames in.

The core was too proud.

To it, those flames were nothing—weak as candlefire. Once absorbed, they’d be assimilated and turned into its own power.

It misjudged badly.

Andona’s blade carried the blessing of holy light, and she layered that radiance onto the dragonfire itself. Under sacred illumination, Seraphina’s red flames turned even brighter, and their power surged. What had only been fire clinging to wind streams began to take root inside the wind core.

Seraphina and Andona watched it absorb their power without stopping it.

They both knew the truth.

That core couldn’t actually swallow what it had just eaten.

These wind constructs were born with an unfair advantage—ridiculous speed and real killing power. They could drag a fight out with mobility, sure. But compared to the first wind blast they’d met, they were still weaker.

They could run.

They could stall.

They could not digest a Dragon God’s dragonfire and Andona’s holy execution.