Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1210: The Goddess Walks Free

Ethan opened the system immediately.

A cold sweep of scanning light flickered across his eyes. The data panel unfolded in an instant, lines of information assembling piece by piece—until Ethan’s already tense brow sank even further.

This thing was a Puppet General.

The system’s feedback organized itself quickly. A Puppet General was a Crimson Ultimate hero unique to this world. From the moment they were born, they began hunting for "puppets," then lodging themselves inside the host to siphon their energy. When needed, they could take control of the puppet’s body and fight through it—while the person being controlled felt absolutely nothing the entire time.

The only time the host truly felt anything...

...was the moment they died.

Ethan’s breathing quickened.

The power bursting off this Puppet General was more than twice Corvath’s. And it wasn’t just raw energy piled high. Ethan could feel it in the way the sky’s spatial fissures reacted, in how the surrounding energy actively retreated, and even in the way his Thunder power inside his own body bristled like it had sensed a natural predator.

If he tried to collide head-on, he might not come out on top.

As Ethan weighed it, the Puppet General suddenly shouted.

The sound wasn’t arrogant anymore—it was pure, barely contained panic. It tightened its grip on the fire-red gemstone and jerked backward in midair, like it had sensed something rushing toward it.

Ethan didn’t even have time to follow the direction of its retreat—

Before an invisible force ripped the Puppet General apart.

The tearing sound was short. Sharp. Nasty.

That tiny body shattered in midair. The fire-red gemstone flew free, knocked out of its grasp. The space it had crushed open trembled, then started to stabilize; the web of cracks tightened and shrank as a heavier, stronger presence pressed down, forcing the chaotic energy back into submission.

Then a woman stepped out.

Alluring. Unhurried.

She walked forward with slow, deliberate steps, and the battlefield—just moments ago a mess of corrosion, lightning backlash, and shattered crimson light—quieted as if someone had turned a dial. The remaining corrosive aura, the transparent thunder residue, the glittering fragments left from the broken blood-red barrier... everything was pushed aside by her mere arrival.

She glanced at the spot where the Puppet General had been torn apart.

Her eyes didn’t even ripple.

"I truly didn’t expect those Puppet Generals to dare lodge themselves inside my people," she said coolly, as if commenting on a stain on her sleeve. "Suicidal."

The moment her energy spread—

All of Mournvale Abyss seemed to sink under an invisible weight.

A deep rumble rolled from the far sky. It wasn’t thunder. It sounded more like the world itself groaning because it couldn’t bear her existence. The canyon walls began to tremble. Gravel spilled from cracks. The corrosive aura and dark power that had been twisting together in the air a moment ago were forced outward—and even their flow slowed, like they’d been pressed into sluggish obedience.

Ethan’s eyes widened.

His body moved before his mind finished deciding. He retreated several steps, his soles grinding across broken stone and leaving clear scrape marks. At the same time, every ounce of power in him surged out. Transparent lightning and energy streams braided together, rapidly forming a thick barrier around his body. Electric arcs rolled across its surface, ring after ring of patterns spreading outward as he tried to block that pressure.

But the pressure still seeped in.

The woman tilted her head. Her gaze drifted over Ethan slowly, with casual interest—like she’d just found something rare washed up from a crack in the abyss. She didn’t attack. She didn’t rush to speak. She simply looked.

Then she took two steps forward.

Just two.

Ethan’s barrier began to hum with a low, strained vibration.

"You’re a well-built little kid," she murmured, voice soft—yet somehow it pinned the whole battlefield’s turbulence down. "A bit handsome, too. Why don’t you stay by my side? Maybe I’ll give you power beyond anything you’ve imagined."

Ethan’s pupils tightened.

She wasn’t even gathering energy. She wasn’t throwing techniques.

And yet the might in her every movement was so violent it made no sense. It wasn’t a simple burst of force—it was that the space around her chose to give way. When she spoke, the chaotic corrosion and darkness in the air quieted down like they’d been scolded.

In the next instant, she was right in front of him.

Ethan watched her walk straight through his barrier.

The shield didn’t shatter. It didn’t tear.

She simply stepped inside, as if the defense had never existed. Transparent lightning snapped into fine arcs at her side, but it couldn’t even brush the hem of her clothes.

Cold crawled up Ethan’s spine.

He tried to retreat—but the space beneath his feet was completely sealed.

Not with ropes. Not with chains.

Distance itself had been crushed flat by an invisible force. His body was still in the motion of pulling back, muscles already tensed, energy surging inside him... yet he couldn’t move even half a step.

A pale, smooth hand reached out and clamped around his throat.

Her fingers were slender, icy to the touch—yet the suppression they carried was more unshakable than Adamant Essence. The moment her hand closed, a strange energy rippled from her fingertips and slid down Ethan’s skin, spreading fast until it wrapped his whole body.

Ethan’s breathing hit a frantic peak.

He tried to force his power up. Transparent lightning surged through his meridians, aiming to erupt through his shoulders and arms and blast her hand away—

But the instant the lightning reached his throat, it was pressed back down.

The power in his chest slammed against the lock again and again, each attempt like smashing into a thick stone gate—only to be met with heavier recoil.

No matter how hard Ethan struggled, her hand stayed locked around his throat like an adamantine vise.

He couldn’t break free.

Worse—her presence carried a suppression he’d never felt before. It didn’t tear him apart. It didn’t crush his bones.

It simply pinned all his energy down.

Transparent lightning. Thunder power. The violent force that had just shredded Corvath’s shoulder... all of it was trapped inside him, unable to truly burst out.

Ethan forced himself to calm down.

He stared at the woman, eyes cutting past her face to the faint but lethal fluctuations around her body. Brute force wouldn’t work. Not right now.

So he opened the system again and tried to scan her.

The scan wave flickered across his eyes and swept toward her body—

Nothing.

Ethan’s heart sank.

The system hadn’t failed to start. It hadn’t been interrupted.

It simply couldn’t capture a single piece of valid information from her. Level. Power. Status. Race—everything that should’ve filled the panel was blank.

That meant only one thing.

Her level and strength were beyond him by an absurd margin.

"Who are you?" Ethan forced out, fighting the tightness in his throat.

Even as he spoke, he kept trying to move his power. Transparent lightning hammered at the seal deep inside him, leaving his chest and arm meridians aching—but her grip never loosened.

She watched him struggle, and amusement deepened in her eyes.

She chuckled softly, then lifted her other hand and brushed her fingertips along Ethan’s cheek.

The touch was gentle—almost intimate.

On Ethan, it landed like a siren alarm. As her fingers grazed his skin, that suppressing force pressed in closer, like she was casually checking every channel of power in his body, confirming what he was made of.

"I am the Goddess of Mournvale Abyss."

As she said it, the abyss energy around them lowered instinctively, as if it had heard a name it couldn’t disobey. The remaining rifts in the sky trembled faintly. Even the small stones on the ground stopped rolling as her voice fell.

Her smile faded a little, her tone still unhurried.

"It’s just... awkward, where I am now. Ever since that sister-and-brother pair took this place, I haven’t shown myself here in the form of a Goddess."

Ethan’s mind jolted.

Goddess.

The title confirmed his instincts. This woman’s identity was anything but ordinary. But the "sister and brother" she mentioned left him unsettled. If they could seize an entire abyss—and force her to stop appearing as a Goddess here—then what kind of monsters were they?

He didn’t get the chance to ask.

Space beside them suddenly tore open. The edges of the rift bulged with chaotic, glowing patterns. A heavy figure stepped out—

A massive minotaur.

The instant his hoof hit the ground, the stone floor shuddered. The impact rolled outward, and a dense network of cracks crawled away from his feet. Power poured off him, violent and savage. His back and shoulders were broad like a wall of rock, and each breath stirred grit and debris into small swirls.

But the moment he saw the woman—

His face changed completely.

His pupils constricted. His steps froze. Even the violent aura around him stumbled, off-beat for a split second.

"Lady Catheryn!" The minotaur’s voice was thick with disbelief. "That’s impossible. Weren’t you sealed in the nearby mountain range? How did you suddenly get out?"