Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1143: Gold Draws Wolves

Ethan stayed at the very front.

Transparent lightning radiated off him in a steady field. Every time his boot hit the ground, the nearby golden energy barriers warped under the pressure, buckling like they were being crushed by an invisible hand.

A few Solaryn elites tried to hit him from the flank. The gemstones in their foreheads lit at the same time, and a golden chain condensed in midair—meant to lock down his movement.

Ethan only flicked his hand.

Transparent lightning swept through.

The golden chain was severed in the middle, clean and brutal. The Solaryn attackers exploded with it.

Blood mist and shattered pieces of pale pink gemstone rained down. Before any of it could even touch the ground, the Emerald Castle soldiers charging up behind Ethan trampled it into fragments.

The golden castle’s defenses collapsed fast.

Energy cannon fire ripped huge gaps into the walls. Spires toppled one after another. Inside the city, the amplification devices that fed their golden power were forcibly dismantled by goblin engineering teams, torn out like organs.

The Solaryn kept falling back—some trying to flee into the mining zone, some scrambling to restart deeper layers of shielding, some dropping to their knees by the roadside to beg.

Ethan gave them nothing.

To Emerald Castle, the Solaryn had already become mortal enemies on the battlefield of Elysion. Now that he’d found their castle, their mine, their fingerprints—this reckoning wasn’t going to leave loose ends.

Before long, the entire golden castle was wiped off the map.

The last Solaryn were cut down at the mine entrance. Pale pink gemstones scattered across the ground like spilled teeth, and the golden radiance that had blanketed the city guttered out with them.

High walls collapsed into rubble. Spires snapped. Every defensive pattern etched into the stone was scorched black by transparent lightning.

Ethan stepped through the ruins and climbed toward the mine the Solaryn had controlled.

As soon as he reached the core region, he stopped.

The energy density here was on a completely different level.

A thin golden fog floated in the air. Under his feet, energy flowed slowly through the rock layers—like golden rivers buried inside the mountain. From deep in the tunnels came a low, constant vibration, and every pulse pushed a richer surge of power up from underground.

After Feylora’s people cleared a path, Ethan finally saw what lay at the heart of the mine.

A vein of golden ore embedded deep in the rock wall.

The pieces varied—some only the size of a fist, others like massive crystal clusters that had grown straight out from the mountain’s bones.

Their surfaces were rough, edges laced with natural fractures, but inside, a steady golden light circulated without fading.

Ethan reached out and touched one.

A warm, heavy current rolled into his palm immediately.

This energy was strange.

It didn’t match any conventional element Ethan knew. It didn’t feel like pure Primordial Force, and it definitely wasn’t the violent, domineering power of the Infernal Abyss.

But it could be absorbed directly—and the structure was insanely stable. Stable enough to feed a warship’s weapon systems, power cores, and large-scale installations without the usual risk of collapse.

Ethan’s eyes lit.

This mine was worth far more than he’d expected.

"Take everything," he ordered, not wasting a second.

"Leave not a single piece of ore behind. Drain the mine’s core energy too. Once it’s back at Emerald Castle, priority goes to the Sky Fortress and the weapons R&D division."

The goblin engineering teams practically vibrated with excitement.

They threw up mining rigs in a rush. Energy transfer lines were connected to the veins one after another. Storage containers were hauled out of spatial gear and lined neatly along the tunnels.

The Fallen Star Guard took up perimeter watch. Regular soldiers handled transport. The mine turned into a controlled frenzy of work within minutes.

Golden ore was cut from the rock face and fed into hauling devices chunk by chunk.

Dense energy flowed through the pipes into storage cores, producing a low, steady hum. Every time another crate was sealed and moved, the heat of excitement in Ethan’s chest climbed a little higher.

Resources like this were enough to push Emerald Castle’s energy system forward by a whole stage.

And right as they were harvesting the mine at full speed—

A heavy, grinding roar rolled across the sky from somewhere not far away.

Ethan looked up.

In the distance, the spatial barrier was being torn open by brute force. The edges of the rip writhed and curled, chaotic light spilling out from within. A moment later, a flood of figures shot through the breach and descended into this sky, each one carrying an aggressive, crushing presence.

They were clearly not Solaryn.

The energy on them felt rougher. Hungrier. Like predators that had smelled blood.

At their head hovered a tall man with a long saber at his waist. A strange, heavy pressure rolled off him, thick enough to make the air feel viscous.

His gaze swept over the ruined golden castle, then dropped to the mine that was already being stripped. Greed surfaced in his eyes without the slightest attempt to hide it.

"Well, I’ll be damned," he said, his voice echoing across the land with open mockery. "Solaryn actually got wiped out."

He laughed, sharp and contemptuous.

"What a bunch of trash. Works for me—now their castle and their energy are mine."

The voice hit everyone around the mine like a slap.

Emerald Castle soldiers snapped their weapons up. The goblin engineering teams froze mid-operation and hurried back behind the defensive line with their rigs. Feylora’s expression hardened as she turned to Ethan.

Ethan was already floating into the air.

He looked at the newcomers like they were dirt under his boot. Transparent lightning seeped off his shoulders and down his arms, spreading outward. The golden mist lit by the mine’s energy was pushed back under his pressure, retreating in a widening ring.

"The hell are you supposed to be?" Ethan’s voice was just as domineering, crushing the man’s greedy laughter flat. "You think you can show up and steal energy from my Emerald Castle?"

As he spoke, a huge sphere of lightning was already forming in his palm.

Transparent lightning compressed inside it in tight, violent layers. Arcs crawled across the surface, ready to be thrown at any second.

The man opposite narrowed his eyes.

He sized Ethan up from head to toe, then glanced at the army behind him and the mine below. The arrogance on his face didn’t soften for even a breath.

Then he reached for the saber at his waist and drew it out slowly.

The instant the blade cleared the sheath, even the energy currents in the sky were dragged into a thin, stretched line—like the air itself had been scored.

"Here I was thinking you might be someone worth noticing." The man sneered. "Turns out you’re just a bug that crawled out of some low-tier Plane World."

He lifted the saber. Violent energy poured over the blade.

"Let me show you what real power looks like."

The moment the last word fell, he swung.

The saber came down, and a vast crescent of raging energy surged with it—an enormous arc-blade that swept across the sky. The air split cleanly in its path, and fine cracks spiderwebbed through the spatial barrier itself.

The slash bore down on Ethan, crushing the space ahead of it as it came.