Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Elowen noticed the movement behind her and frowned slightly.

Why was this little thing so restless?

Couldn’t she just sit quietly for one minute?

One of Velmira’s many eyes happened to meet Elowen’s gaze.

Velmira instantly pulled her thin wings back over her head.

Okay—yeah.

She really, really got it. She was wrong.

This group was full of people you didn’t mess with.

...No. Correction.

Maybe the only one she could bully was Seraphina.

Inside the distant mountain, Ethan and Shedra were still going at it.

For some reason, the more Shedra moved, the stronger she got. Every time her body twisted, more purplish-red breath surged from beneath her scales, and the speed of her tail strikes kept climbing.

She’d already given up on maintaining that first energy sphere in her mouth.

Her massive tail whipped at Ethan from every angle—sometimes slamming down from the front, sometimes sweeping sideways along the cliff face. At the same time, she kept trying to predict where Ethan would land next, snapping her jaws open to tear into him.

Ethan watched her "predict" him again and again, and his expression got... weird.

This snake’s tactics were so naïve it was almost impressive.

It didn’t feel like she was insulting his judgment.

It felt like she was insulting idiots.

I’m done playing.

Ethan stopped in the center of the mountain.

White lightning rose from his palm.

Arcs converged, compressing into a stable energy sphere. He didn’t fire it right away—he just stood there, calm, waiting for Shedra’s next move.

Shedra sensed the danger and immediately retreated.

Her huge body dragged rock and debris, sealing up the mountain wall she’d smashed open earlier. Rubble and dirt slumped down in slabs, locking Ethan inside the mountain.

Shedra looped around to the outside.

She stopped at the spot she thought Ethan would emerge from, opened her mouth, and began charging again.

Purplish-red light rose from deep in her throat.

The sphere expanded until it filled her entire mouth. Abyss-black power and fire-red frenzy energy crushed against each other inside it, generating a stronger and stronger pull.

Shedra waited outside the mountain, perfectly still, ready for Ethan to break out.

Inside the mountain, it was pitch-black.

Ethan tilted his head, glanced at the blocked passage, and tossed the white energy sphere upward.

It floated above him.

A blinding glow instantly flooded the mountain’s belly, painting every rough rock wall—and spilling through cracks to illuminate the nearby insect swarms outside.

Some newly born bugs couldn’t adapt to the sudden light.

Their eyes were scorched. They dropped to the ground and went still.

Pathetic.

The white sphere kept rising.

Boom!

The mountaintop blew open from the inside.

Rock blasted into the sky. White light speared out through the hole.

Shedra, waiting outside, snapped her head up, locked onto the opening, and stared hard. The purplish-red sphere in her mouth was already in firing condition—its surface stretching forward, ready to launch.

But Ethan didn’t appear at the summit.

He hadn’t moved along the route Shedra "predicted" at all.

Inside the mountain, Ethan was calmly carving through the rock wall on the opposite side.

White lightning formed blade-sharp edges along his fingertips, slicing the stone layer by layer. Pebbles kept rolling inward from the opening, but he walked unhurriedly, almost casually.

As he advanced, Ethan was still thinking about how to control Shedra.

The reason was simple.

Curiosity.

He genuinely wanted to know what would happen when two energy structures that were almost identical collided head-on.

On the far side of the mountain—directly opposite Shedra—a dark hole slowly opened.

The first thread of white light cut out from within.

Shedra whipped her head around.

The next instant, a white lightning-wrapped energy sphere shot out of the hole.

The moment it cleared the mountain, it accelerated violently.

Air compressed into rings. A piercing boom spread outward along the trajectory. The white sphere flew straight for Shedra’s head without the slightest deviation.

Shedra had been waiting for this.

She opened her mouth and fired her purplish-red sphere at the exact same time—charged to the limit.

Her response was still slow... but what did it matter?

Ethan didn’t play by her rules in the first place.

The white sphere and the purplish-red sphere collided head-on in front of the mountain.

They didn’t explode immediately.

They stopped in midair first, their surfaces pressed tightly together.

A ripple—mostly purplish-red—spread slowly from the point of contact.

When it passed over the ground, sand, loose stones, and the insect swarm all got shoved at once. Some small crawlers couldn’t keep their footing and were swept into the air, tumbling as they were flung away.

Velmira saw the bugs and panicked.

She beat her wings hard, trying to break free of the ice under her feet so she could catch them.

Queen Elowen read her intention.

Elowen gave a small flick of her hand and closed her eyes.

The ice binding Velmira vanished.

Velmira shot forward and caught the blown-away little insects with her thin wings.

The moment she left her original spot, the purplish-red ripple in the center of the battlefield abruptly disappeared.

A pure white ripple replaced it.

A much larger shockwave burst from between the two spheres, swallowing the nearby mountain and the surrounding airspace. White lightning danced across the ground while the purplish-red glow was steadily forced back toward the collision point.

When the two spheres touched, each had begun to drink in the other’s power.

The white sphere devoured the purplish-red energy.

The purplish-red sphere, in turn, siphoned the white lightning.

They used the stolen power to strengthen themselves—then used that increased strength to siphon even more.

A brand-new perpetual engine was born on the spot.

But the balance didn’t last long.

Cracks appeared first on the purplish-red sphere.

At the end of the day, Shedra’s own power still wasn’t strong enough—nor was it pure enough.

Inside that sphere, half of it came from abyss-black force, the other half from fire-red berserk energy. Put together, the destructive power was terrifying... but it couldn’t form a stable enough attraction structure.

It could destroy.

It wasn’t built to keep swallowing.

As its internal pull weakened, the purplish-red sphere could no longer take energy from the white one.

It started to run dry.

Cracks raced across its surface.

Finally, the entire purplish-red sphere was swallowed by the white lightning.

The white sphere won the collision—and it didn’t disperse afterward.

After absorbing the leftovers, it grew even larger and continued along its original path toward Shedra.

It got faster and faster.

Space itself seemed to part to either side as it passed.

Shedra felt the pressure bearing down on her head-on.

The blood-red in her eyes dimmed for a brief instant, and a flicker of clarity surfaced in her pupils.

But that clarity lasted only a heartbeat.

Red washed over her eyes again.

Shedra didn’t retreat. She didn’t dodge.

She snapped her massive tail again, swinging it over the incoming white sphere, whipping straight at Ethan in the mountain tunnel.

At the same time, she opened her mouth.

Purplish-red power gathered once more from deep in her throat.

Ethan watched the red in Shedra’s eyes flicker back and forth.

Sometimes she clawed her way into a sliver of sanity, and her huge body would hesitate with it—

and then, a moment later, the blood-red would drown her again, and her tail and mouth energy would spiral out of control.

After it happened a few times, Ethan’s curiosity drained away fast.

This farce wasn’t worth observing anymore.

Wind rose under his feet.

Ethan stepped on slabs of compressed space, strolling toward Shedra with a lazy sway. Her massive tail still lashed overhead, each pass kicking up wind pressure strong enough to flip boulders, and he didn’t even look up.

The tail slammed down beside him.

Space split aside, opening a narrow seam, and the attack missed his clothes by a hair.

Shock finally appeared in Shedra’s blood-red eyes.

She opened her mouth, trying to fire the newly forming purplish-red sphere—

but Ethan was already in front of her head.

The white energy sphere hovered above his palm.

Ethan lifted his hand and pushed forward.

The sphere didn’t smash into her scales. It didn’t explode outside.

It bored straight into the center of Shedra’s forehead, drilling into her skull.

White lightning threaded through the energy channels beneath her scales and surged inward, spreading fast.