Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1193: A Bomb Called Armor

Ethan retreated to a safer distance, his face darkening.

He finally understood.

Even after activating the powered combat armor’s backup hidden energy, he could erupt with strength close to Lily’s for a short time—but the biggest gap between them wasn’t raw output. It was purity. Every thread of Lily’s snow-white lightning could rip open the structure of an enemy’s power, while Ethan’s attacks, for all their savagery, were easy for an opponent like that to dismantle the moment they made contact.

If he kept forcing his way in, he’d only drag Lily down.

So Ethan didn’t try to play the hero.

He spun and charged toward the other fronts, unleashing every last drop the armor’s backup reserve could produce—no holding back.

Against ordinary enemy troops, that power hit completely different.

Transparent lightning swept across the sky. Golden runes flared and became wide sheets of light-blades. Wherever they passed, enemy powered combat armor was torn open like paper. Those soldiers who’d been relying on Nirvana energy to regenerate started dropping in chunks under Ethan’s assault—blue cores in their abdomens detonating one after another—until the enemy line was ripped open by a brutal, bleeding gap.

The pressure on Korvath eased immediately.

He led his men in from the flank. After shattering one enemy warrior’s armor, he lifted into a hover and pulled up beside Ethan.

"I could feel it from way the hell out—something here was off."

Korvath was panting hard. Several fresh cracks spiderwebbed across his armor.

"So I grabbed my people and came running. Didn’t think it’d really be you."

Ethan glanced at him, a rush of gratitude hitting so hard it almost hurt.

For Korvath to bring people in at a moment like this was a massive risk. These enemies weren’t just strong—they had frighteningly advanced tech. Every single one of them wore heavy powered combat armor. Against that, Korvath’s men had no business taking a straight fight.

But they came anyway.

Ethan didn’t waste words. He raised a hand and gave the order.

"Emerald Castle—full counterattack!"

The command went out, and the Emerald Castle army surged forward at once. Sky Fortress artillery blanketed the enemy rear. The Fallen Star Guard cut into the center of the battlefield like a knife. And the powered combat armor fighters pushed through the breach Ethan had carved open, widening the advantage step by step.

Then—just as the line started to roll forward—lightning erupted across the sky.

It wasn’t Ethan’s transparent thunder.

These bolts burst from distant spatial rifts, blasting open one fractured layer of space after another. Cracks split, multiplied, and yawned wide, as if some invisible giant hand was tearing a passage straight into the battlefield.

A heartbeat later, an army marched out in a dense, overwhelming flood.

The energy rolling off them was just as brutal—and a few of those presences were even worse, their aura spiking all the way to 36 Tier. The instant they arrived, the flow of energy across the surrounding battlefields was thrown into chaos again, and Emerald Castle’s counterattack was forced to slow.

Ethan’s brows locked together.

Looks like today really was going to turn into a bloodbath.

He didn’t retreat. He didn’t wait.

"All units—engage!"

The moment the order left his mouth, Ethan shot straight at the newly arrived force. His powered combat armor was already half scrap. The backup hidden energy might last another thirty minutes, tops. Before it ran dry, he had to kill as many as possible—anything to take pressure off Emerald Castle and Korvath’s unit.

He’d barely plunged into the fray when a cold, venomous voice slid in from the side.

"Kid... you’ve got some nerve."

Ethan snapped his head toward it.

A man wreathed in flame-energy was watching him, eyes locked like a predator that had finally found prey. In the man’s hands, a massive greatsword condensed in an instant—fire crawling up the blade. He lifted it high, and the heat rolling off it warped the air into shimmering distortions.

"So you really did it," the man sneered. "You actually installed a backup hidden energy source in powered combat armor."

He let out a short, ugly laugh.

"You do realize the second that reserve runs out, your armor will explode on the spot, right?"

Right before the greatsword fell, mockery filled his eyes.

"You’re begging to die."

Ethan lifted his chin. Inside his armor, warning alarms screamed without pause. The reserve energy count was dropping fast, and an unstable tremor was already pulsing from his chest plate in ugly waves.

He still didn’t back off.

"I’ll put you down before it blows!"

Ethan roared, the energy in his body detonating at full throttle.

Transparent lightning, golden runes, and the armor’s remaining backup reserve surged together in the sky, compressing into a gigantic spear in the span of a breath. Electricity prowled over its surface, and the spearhead carried a heavy, suffocating Primordial Core aura. The moment it formed, tiny cracks pricked open in the surrounding space—as if reality itself couldn’t hold the edge.

At the same time, the flame-wreathed man brought his greatsword down.

They collided head-on.

The instant blade met spear, fire and lightning exploded together. Violent energy blasted outward from between them, and the space nearby fractured into a web of dense cracks. Turbulent chaos spat from the edges—only to be ripped wider by the second shockwave that followed.

Ethan forced himself to hold the greatsword back, but the pressure traveled up his arms like a crushing weight, all the way into the bone.

And as the seconds dragged on, his stomach sank lower and lower.

He didn’t have much time.

If he kept grinding it out like this, the enemy wouldn’t be the one to fall first—his powered combat armor would. And once the backup hidden energy backfired, he’d die on the spot.

Ethan drew a hard breath and shoved every stray thought down.

Then, in the next instant, he dumped every last shred of his remaining reserve into the spear. The transparent lightning crawling over it surged violently, the golden runes lighting up all at once. The spear’s shaft couldn’t handle that kind of injection—fine cracking pops began to rattle through it like something about to split.

Ethan drove both arms forward and hurled the spear with everything he had.

The flame-wreathed man snapped his greatsword up to block.

Boom!

The spear slammed into the blade. The force erupting from the spearhead jolted the flaming sword up and back. Under the man’s boots, space itself fractured into spreading cracks, and the impact shoved him back more than a dozen steps.

The hand gripping his sword finally started to tremble.

Using the moment the man was forced back, Ethan made his decision.

The powered combat armor had hit its limit. Inside, the backup hidden energy was still running wild. Dangerous, muffled detonations kept thudding from the chest piece, and jagged cracks had already opened along the pauldrons and the sides of the waist plating. If he kept wearing it, then when the energy fully went out of control, the first thing it would blow apart would be him.

He didn’t hesitate.

Both hands clamped onto the armor’s core, and he ripped the entire set of powered combat armor off his body by force.

The instant it separated, Ethan’s body dropped like someone had dumped lead into his veins. Without the external assist, the exhaustion from all those back-to-back bursts crashed over him. He swallowed it down, locked his breathing, and shoved the violently shuddering armor into a spatial orb.

Transparent lightning spilled from his fingertips, carving rune-like seals across the orb’s surface in rapid, precise strokes.

Those runes weren’t there to stabilize it.

They were there to make sure it blew.

The moment Ethan finished the final seal, he whipped his arm and hurled the spatial orb straight out.

Across from him, the flame man had just finished dealing with the lingering impact from the spear. His sword hand was still twitching. He looked up—and the first thing he saw was that tiny spatial sphere already right in his face.

His pupils pinched tight.

Before he could even form a complete reaction, every rune on the sphere flared at once.

The next second, a horrific explosion detonated directly in front of him.

BOOOOM—!

The spatial orb burst apart from the inside. The backup hidden energy inside the powered combat armor—already compressed to the breaking point—lost control completely. The explosive runic seals guided the blast outward, while also forcing the energy at the center to stack and compress into itself. The two effects drove each other, and the resulting destructive shock formed a blinding ball of light in midair.

The flame-wreathed man was terrified out of his mind.

He jerked his greatsword up, pouring every scrap of flame energy he had into the blade, then condensed a thick, heavy shield in front of himself, trying to take the blast head-on.

But this wasn’t a normal attack.

The powered combat armor’s energy had already reached the critical threshold.

And every single rune on that spatial orb had been a detonation-type seal.

With the two layered together, the energy released was enough to wipe out an entire small world.