Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1167 1167: Morgrath Awakens

Ethan stared at the mountain range, and the excitement in his eyes finally overflowed.

This place really was a mineral paradise.

He didn't hesitate. Orders snapped out immediately.

"Spread out. Search downward for energy ore veins."

"Once you find a mining zone, mark it immediately."

"If anyone blocks you—wipe them out."

The Emerald Castle army dispersed at once. Powered Combat Armor units dove first toward different parts of the range. Goblin engineering teams followed with detection gear. The Fallen Star Guard fanned out on both flanks, ready to intercept anything that tried to blindside them.

But right as they were about to touch down, a strange hum rang out across heaven and earth.

It wasn't a roar. It wasn't wind. It felt more like the entire mountain range had been struck at the same time by some unseen hammer. The ore-vein energy in the air froze for a heartbeat—then all of it reverse-flowed, surging back toward the range's center.

Ethan looked up.

Above a distant ridge, space itself was being pushed aside in rippling layers.

And then a massive figure appeared between sky and earth.

The instant Ethan made out its outline, his gaze sank.

At the heart of the Morgrath range, a colossal Stone Golem rose from deep inside the rock strata.

Its body was stacked from heavy mountain stone and ore-crystal veins, its shoulders towering over several nearby peaks. In the center of its chest sat a gem the color of deep sapphire.

Each time that gem pulsed, the veins throughout the surrounding mountains shuddered in response—like the whole land was being dragged along with its breathing.

Ethan didn't wait for it to speak.

Bone-white lightning burst out of him, compressed in his palm into a huge sphere of energy.

Lightning churned inside the orb. Around its outer shell, he wrapped strands of ore-vein power he'd ripped straight out of Morgrath's air. When the pressure hit its limit, he thrust his hand forward.

The sphere tore across the sky with a blinding tail and slammed straight into the Stone Golem's chest.

The giant Stone Golem's eyes flared wide. For the first time, clear anger carved itself onto that rock-formed face.

It obviously hadn't expected Ethan to not only trespass—but strike first.

The golem let out a low, grinding bellow and drove both feet into the ridge, cracking thick layers of stone on the spot. The sapphire gem erupted with light, spreading across its chest, up its neck, and down both arms like glowing veins.

Then it forcefully yanked energy out of the mountains, condensing it above its head into an equally massive stone phantom.

The phantom raised an arm and smashed down head-on into Ethan's incoming orb.

Boom!

The two forces collided in the high sky.

The energy sphere was pinned against the stone phantom's fist, lightning inside it tearing outward in savage arcs. The phantom itself began to splinter under the impact, huge flakes of rocklight and vein-energy peeling from its knuckles.

The sky around the collision point compressed into a warped hollow—then detonated outward, birthing a dense web of spatial rifts.

A dimensional storm howled out of those cracks, spiraling as it spread in every direction.

Ethan's brow tightened.

He knew exactly how dangerous a dimensional storm was.

That wasn't ordinary backlash. If you got caught in it, your body, your soul, your gear, and even your energy core would be shredded by layered currents of spatial turbulence.

Even Powered Combat Armor might not last long in that kind of tearing.

He didn't try to brute-force it where he was.

Bone-white lightning wrapped him, and Ethan became a streak of electricity, slipping along the storm's edge as he closed in on the Stone Golem from the side.

Behind him, dimensional rifts opened and snapped shut. A few strands of spatial turbulence scraped his protective layer—only to be cleaved apart by lightning on contact.

In the next breath, Ethan was already in front of the Stone Golem.

He lifted his palm. Transparent lightning detonated outward, striking straight for the golem's chest. It didn't spread; it condensed into a razor-thin electric beam that drilled through the outer rock layers and drove straight toward the area around that sapphire gem.

The Stone Golem's massive body shuddered hard.

It stumbled back several steps, each one crushing a section of ridgeline underfoot.

The sapphire stone in its chest flickered wildly. Chunks of rock sheared off its shoulders and torso, tumbling into the gorge below.

"Who are you, really?"

It forced the words out through clenched stone teeth, the sound like two mountains grinding together.

"What did you come here for?"

It didn't wait for Ethan's answer. Both arms spread wide. The light from the sapphire in its chest speared into the ground, and the surrounding mountains immediately answered with a heavy, rolling roar. Cliff faces split. Stone heaved. And tall figures began to step out from inside the mountains.

One after another—

Stone Golems.

They weren't as gigantic as the first one, but they were still terrifyingly huge. Every body was built from mountain rock and ore crystal, and each of them had the same sapphire gem embedded in the center of its chest.

As they marched free of the slopes, the entire Morgrath range was swallowed by the low thunder of their footsteps.

Emerald Castle's formations snapped tight.

The Fallen Star Guard rose into the air. Powered Combat Armor units spread out into an outer defensive ring.

The goblin engineering teams didn't even get the chance to land and start scanning for ore veins. They pulled back behind the lines at once and began erecting temporary defensive barriers.

Ethan took a step back. Two more energy gems had already appeared in his hand.

He flicked his wrist.

The gems shot toward the two foremost Stone Golems.

The moment they left his fingers, countless fine cracks spidered across their surfaces, and the compressed power inside them swelled rapidly mid-flight.

The two golems barely managed to raise their arms to guard their chests—

The gems slammed into them.

BOOM! BOOM!

Two enormous energy vortices detonated between sky and earth.

The centers of the vortices shredded the sapphire stones in the golems' chests first, then tore straight through the rest of their bodies.

Heavy rock layers were dragged into the storm of energy, pulverized stone and ore crystal spraying everywhere. Before either golem could take a second step, they were blasted into sprawling chunks.

That strike bought a moment.

And it also set the entire hive on fire.

Power surged up from the mountains' depths. More sapphire light ignited between the rock layers, one after another.

All the Stone Golems lifted their heads. Beams from the gems in their chests interwove, and strange silhouettes condensed in the sky.

Those shapes weren't stone.

They looked like beings formed from pure energy—tall, their edges constantly rippling as if they couldn't quite hold a fixed outline.

At each energy body's forehead sat a gem of a different color. The power flowing through those gems felt incredibly heavy, linked directly to the deep ore-vein aura of Morgrath itself.

The pressure rolling off them was no weaker than the Stone Golems'.

Worse—

The instant these energy beings appeared, every single gaze locked onto Ethan. The hatred in their eyes was even more obvious than the golems'.

Ethan's expression finally sharpened.

He'd thought Morgrath was just rich in minerals—maybe guarded by a batch of Stone Golems at most.

He hadn't expected so many energy entities hidden in the depths, each with a strange gem set into its forehead.

If they coordinated with the golems and unleashed everything at once, the Emerald Castle force that had only just entered Morgrath could get dragged into a brutally nasty war of attrition.