Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1200: Where Runes Lead

Ethan stared at the towering figure, the fruit in his hand frozen halfway to his mouth.

This time, even the phantom silhouette of the Angel King behind Andona was being pressed down hard enough that its glow visibly wavered.

The moment Ethan caught sight of the purple runes crawling across that giant figure, his eyes went wide.

Those weren’t ordinary energy patterns. They floated across the surface of the projection, each rune slowly rotating on its own axis, churning with destruction compressed to the absolute limit. Purple-red lightning threaded between them, flashing across the sky in uneven bursts—bright, then dim, then bright again.

Ethan immediately opened a system scan.

The feedback poured straight into his mind.

The power rolling across Xerathor’s body came from an unbelievably eerie type of The Infernal Abyss rune energy. It wasn’t just raw offense—those runes could stack, amplify, and even reconstruct their own might again and again. If this guy detonated every last rune at once, Andona would be in serious trouble.

Ethan didn’t wait.

"Xerathor!"

He suddenly shouted the name and shot up into the air. The energy sphere in his chest spun violently, and transparent lightning exploded out of him, surging forward like a storm front.

Xerathor’s motion stalled for a beat.

He had never given his name.

Yet Ethan had called it out—dead-on.

"What are you?" Xerathor’s gaze locked onto him, cold as ice, a trace of caution finally slipping into his voice. "How do you know my name?"

Ethan didn’t answer.

He just drove the power he’d gathered around himself straight at Xerathor. Transparent lightning unfurled behind him like a massive net of thunder, and in the blink of an eye it swallowed half the sky.

Light slammed down from every direction—first tangling the towering projection behind Xerathor, then tightening inward along the purple runes themselves. The runes shook violently, trying to break free, but the force pouring from the sphere in Ethan’s chest pressed down from the outside, locking Xerathor in place for a brief, precious moment.

Andona, of course, didn’t waste it.

The holy energy on her body detonated in full, radiance flooding down her arm into the Angelic Sword. Dense, intricate sacred patterns ignited along the blade, and the Angel King’s phantom behind her raised its sword in perfect sync.

Then Andona brought the blade down.

The Angelic Sword tore through the sky, slicing straight for Xerathor’s shoulder.

Bang!

The edge crashed into him.

Holy power erupted through the wound, shredding the purple-red lightning on his surface and splitting apart his rune barrier in the same strike. A massive gash opened across his shoulder, ripping from collarbone to the side of his chest—half his body nearly severed by that single swing.

Ethan’s gaze snapped sharp.

He hadn’t expected the Angelic Sword in Andona’s hands to be this terrifying. If Xerathor’s The Infernal Abyss rune energy hadn’t forcibly braced him at the critical instant, that blow would’ve cut him clean in two.

But right then, something deeply unnatural burst from inside Xerathor.

His shattered body didn’t keep bleeding.

Instead, it turned into thick, blood-red lightning suspended in midair. That crimson electricity sprayed out from the split and flooded over his shoulder, chest, and limbs, wrapping the mangled damage until it was completely covered.

Ethan steadied his breathing and pushed his power harder.

The transparent lightning surged again—bigger, denser.

This time, he didn’t give Xerathor a chance to re-form. The force from the sphere in his chest interwove with the transparent lightning, snapping into shape as a layer of thunderlight—a prison—sealing Xerathor’s blood-red lightning body inside.

That blood-red lightning was vicious.

It carried a heavy The Infernal Abyss stench, corroding any foreign energy that touched it. But Ethan’s transparent lightning, in a certain sense, naturally outclassed it. The instant they made contact, the blood-red current was forced back layer by layer, its wild flow slowing fast—like something being pressed under glass.

"What?!" Xerathor’s eyes blew open.

He hadn’t expected to be suppressed this completely.

At this point, he didn’t dare hold anything back. He slammed both fists into his chest. Purple runes and blood-red lightning collapsed inward at the same time. Cracks instantly spiderwebbed across his surface, and a blinding red glow leaked out through every fracture.

Ethan’s heart clenched.

In the next instant, Xerathor’s flesh let out a deafening, world-shaking roar.

Boom!

He—he’d detonated his own body.

The explosion’s blood-red lightning blasted outward, smashing into Ethan’s transparent thunder-prison hard enough to make it shudder violently. Even Andona was driven back a step by the shockwave, the Angelic Sword raised crosswise in front of her as she blocked the incoming fragments of shattered runes.

Ethan froze for a split second.

Before he could fully process what had happened, a transparent soul-figure shot out of the explosion’s center with a shrill, tearing whistle, streaking straight toward the heavens.

Xerathor was trying to run.

"Just some bottom-tier existence."

A cold voice suddenly rang out across the sky.

"And you think you can still escape?"

The temperature between heaven and earth plummeted.

Queen Elowen’s voice carried down—and then an extreme force of ice spread from high above. Icy blue light unfolded like a tide, freezing the entire sky in an instant. Flowing energy stopped dead. Shattered blood-red lightning congealed in place. Even the edges of spatial cracks glazed over with frost.

Xerathor’s newly-escaped soul was frozen on the spot, sealed in midair.

His translucent spirit still held the posture of charging forward, but it couldn’t move so much as an inch.

"Today, I’m going to show you what real, absolute power looks like."

Queen Elowen’s frost power drew inward.

The ice sealing Xerathor’s soul gave a crisp, brittle crack—then the force inside detonated. Savage cold crushed in from all directions at once, blowing Xerathor’s spirit apart until nothing remained but powder.

For a moment, the sky finally fell quiet.

Ethan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

If they didn’t erase Xerathor completely—if he came back for round two—the consequences didn’t bear thinking about. And on top of that, they still didn’t even know what he truly was. All they had was the fact he wielded that eerie The Infernal Abyss rune energy.

Then Korvath suddenly shouted.

He surged into the air, the energy in his body flaring violently, and smashed his power into a patch of empty void. The space there had looked like nothing at all, but the moment Korvath’s force hit, a web of fractures burst into view—like some hidden trail had been beaten out into the open.

"That guy just now—he looked like someone from Mournvale Abyss!"

Ethan’s expression shifted instantly.

He hadn’t expected people from Mournvale Abyss to come knocking this fast.

And the power Xerathor had released was far too intense. It wasn’t just The Infernal Abyss rune energy—there’d also been a dense, heavy Infernal Primordial Power mixed into it. That meant Mournvale Abyss had to be saturated with an extremely rich The Infernal Abyss aura.

More than that...

It might even be a branch world of The Infernal Abyss itself.

Once that conclusion landed, Ethan didn’t hesitate.

He immediately ordered the armies of Emerald Castle to assemble.

The Sky Fortress rose back into the air. The Fallen Star Guard completed their formation. The Powered Combat Armor units ran final checks on their energy cores. Queen Elowen, Andona, Namyanna, Ataneya, and the others returned to the front of their respective lines. Korvath and his native allies followed close behind.

A vast, surging host—

and before long, the army began its march toward Mournvale Abyss.

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