Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory

Chapter 1142: The Shattered Halo

Ethan didn’t answer.

He just rolled his wrist slowly, like he was loosening up before a workout.

Behind him, the Emerald Castle force—nearly ten thousand strong—finished deploying.

The Fallen Star Guard pushed their lines forward. Rows of Powered Combat Armor lit their energy cores in unison. Goblin engineering teams rushed to set up suppression rigs. In the sky, one support marker after another locked onto the golden castle’s outer defenses.

Ethan lifted his hand and sliced it forward.

"Full charge."

The order dropped, and the Emerald Castle army slammed in.

Energy cannon fire hit first, hammering the area around the crack in the golden shield. Powered Combat Armor units dove from above, transparent lightning, mana beams, and heavy blades crashing into the wall together.

On the ground, the Fallen Star Guard advanced, boots pounding over trembling rock as they charged straight at the Solaryn elites who’d just taken to the air.

Solvarion’s eyes snapped wide.

He could feel how dangerous Ethan’s power was. And he could tell this wasn’t some ragged band of raiders—it was a real war machine.

If this turned into a full-scale battle here, the Solaryn castle, the mine, and his people would be headed for total ruin.

But Emerald Castle had already attacked.

At this point, he had no choice.

Solvarion clenched his jaw. The golden halo behind him expanded outward. He lifted his hand and barked the command—every Solaryn in the city was to meet them head-on.

Golden energy erupted from the walls, the spires, and the gemstones set in their foreheads, converging into beams of gold that slammed into Emerald Castle’s incoming wave.

War exploded in a single breath.

Back in Elysion, Emerald Castle had already learned to hate that golden power.

The danger, the losses—every survivor still carried it in their bones. Now that they were seeing the same energy again, nobody held back.

Every strike was meant to kill.

Ethan stood at the center of the battlefield and eased back half a step.

Then his energy detonated.

Transparent lightning burst from beneath his feet. His body vanished from where he stood. By the time Solvarion’s mind caught up, Ethan had already cut through the crossfire of their colliding storms and appeared right in front of him.

They were so close Solvarion could see the electric light jumping in Ethan’s palm.

"To Emerald Castle..."

Ethan’s voice was low, but it crushed its way through every explosion around them.

"You people are a mortal enemy."

His fingers flexed, lightning tightening like a noose.

"No matter what—you’re dying today."

Solvarion’s face twisted with shock and fury.

He’d never met someone this unwilling to talk, and he hadn’t expected Ethan’s killing intent to be so direct—so final.

Golden power flooded out of him in a frenzy. The pale pink gemstone in his forehead blazed, bright enough to sting the eyes, and a massive golden phantom condensed between heaven and earth.

Its outline was strange, its limbs slightly out of proportion—honestly, it didn’t even look majestic.

But the aura it released was horrifying.

Golden shockwaves rolled out from its body in rings, each one carrying the force to crush space itself.

The phantom raised an arm, palm aimed at Ethan. Golden energy gathered in a dense surge, ready to erase the human in front of it.

Ethan’s eyes held nothing but contempt.

He lifted his palm.

Transparent lightning erupted and condensed into a straight, brutal lance of electricity that slammed into the golden phantom head-on.

No detour. No probing.

It punched clean through the phantom’s chest. The moment golden power tried to form a counterstrike, the transparent lightning tore it apart from the inside.

Boom!

The massive golden phantom shattered on the spot.

The halo, the arm, the chest, the head—everything blew into golden fragments that scattered across the air. Those pieces didn’t even get a chance to regroup before Ethan released a second wave of power that swept over them and ground them down into nothing.

The color drained from Solvarion’s face.

He tried to fall back—but Ethan’s power had already spread.

Transparent lightning wrapped around him from every direction, invisible chains locking down his arms, throat, waist, and legs. Solvarion’s golden energy slammed against the bindings again and again, only to be forced back each time by that clear, brutal current.

He was pinned in midair. Helpless.

"Stop!"

Solvarion finally shouted, and there was nothing regal left in his voice.

"If I’m going to die, at least let me die understanding why! Who the hell are you?"

Ethan still didn’t answer.

His raised palm kept pouring out terrifying pressure. Transparent lightning compressed in his hand into a blinding knot of light. Then his arm dropped—

His palm drove straight into Solvarion’s chest.

Bang!

Solvarion’s chest caved inward. His golden protective energy was smashed through in a single hit.

Wild force surged into his body, racing along bone, flesh, and energy channels like it had found a map.

Solvarion convulsed. The pale pink gemstone in his forehead began flashing uncontrollably. Inside him, transparent lightning tore open his defenses inch by inch, shredding his golden energy at the root.

Pain twisted his face into something barely human.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the force rising in his throat choked it off. His bones snapped with dense, rapid cracks. Flesh was sliced open by arcs of light, then blown apart. Power was wrenched out of the gemstone in his forehead and dragged into the transparent lightning, spiraling into total collapse.

Ethan didn’t stop.

He increased the output.

More transparent lightning poured from his palm into Solvarion’s body—like a thunderstorm packed into a human shell. Solvarion’s golden glow finally broke completely. Cracks spread across the pale pink gemstone, then it burst with a shrill, splintering scream.

The next instant, Solvarion was swallowed by electric light.

His body detonated from the inside out—blood, bone, and shards of golden energy exploding into a mangled blur. Transparent lightning swept the air clean, grinding every last trace into nothing, leaving only drifting specks of gold that guttered out in the wind.

Solaryn’s Emperor Solvarion was dead.

The battlefield froze for a heartbeat.

Every golden figure fighting the Emerald Castle troops went stiff.

They stared at the lingering electric glare. They stared at the empty spot where Solvarion had been—mouths open, eyes blown wide. Even the golden attacks forming in their hands stalled mid-shape.

Their Emperor hadn’t even lasted through a full fight.

Fear spread like fire.

Some Solaryn elites instinctively backed away, the light in their pale pink gemstones turning erratic. A few dropped to their knees in midair, arms hanging, voices shaking as they begged Ethan to spare them.

Ethan didn’t even look at the ones kneeling.

He simply raised his hand and issued the execution order.

The moment it went out, the Emerald Castle army didn’t hesitate again. Fallen Star Guard drove forward on the ground. Waves of Powered Combat Armor rose into the air. Transparent lightning and every kind of energy beam rained down together, tearing the already-cracked barrier outside the golden castle completely apart.

The Solaryn ranks collapsed into chaos.

Ethan couldn’t tell if it was because they’d already sent their true elites to Elysion, but the defenders in this castle were weaker than he’d expected.

The Solaryn powerhouses with pale pink gems in their foreheads looked intimidating one-on-one. But once the Emerald Castle host punched through and scattered them, the flaws in their golden energy showed fast—unstable, uneven, easy to disrupt the moment their formation broke.