Mystic Calling：Stone of Glory-Chapter 1020: The War Begins Now

Ethan hovered in the sky, his jaw tightening until his teeth ground audibly.

He genuinely hadn't expected someone from Elysion to be that strong. The man had come out of nowhere and left just as abruptly—but the pressure he'd brought with him was too real to dismiss.

Ethan didn't stay up there.

He quickly returned to Emerald Castle's main city and immediately summoned every core member. The hall felt heavier than usual. That brief exchange—short, but suffocating—had made it clear to everyone that things were nowhere near as simple as they looked. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"Any of you ever heard of Elysion?"

Ethan stood at the front, eyes sweeping the room, his voice low and blunt.

The hall went quiet for a beat.

People looked at each other, confusion on their faces, then shook their heads one after another. For most of them, the name was too unfamiliar—so unfamiliar it didn't connect to anything in memory.

That was when Queen Seraphine slowly stepped forward.

"I… have heard a little," she said. She didn't rush, but she didn't hesitate either. "Elysion seems to be a world drifting in dimensional turbulence. It isn't fixed—more like a Plane World fragment that's always moving through the void. But inside it… live extremely powerful beings and legions."

She paused, her gaze sinking slightly.

"In the stories, almost everyone who comes out of there is strong."

Ethan's eyes sharpened with interest.

The stronger the world, the more valuable it was to him. Resources, energy, origin power—higher-tier troop types, even an entire civilization structure. A place like that wasn't something he could afford to ignore.

"Do you know where its entrance is?"

Seraphine gave a small shake of her head.

"I've only heard of it. I've never actually been there—and I definitely don't know where the entrance is."

Disappointment flashed across Ethan's face.

But it didn't last.

The next second, Feylora hurried in from outside, unable to hide the excitement on her face.

"Master!"

She strode to the center of the hall and pulled out an ice-blue gemstone.

"I locked onto that guy's spatial trajectory when he left. If we follow the location data inside this gem, we can find the spatial path he used."

Ethan snapped his head up, surprise flickering in his eyes.

Feylora took a breath and explained quickly. "When you fought Kelaric, I stayed hidden nearby and didn't jump in. While he wasn't paying attention, I attached a thread of energy to his shoulder. As long as that mark hasn't been completely erased, we can track the trail backward and locate the route he took when he came."

This time, even the others in the hall couldn't hide their shock.

Ethan didn't waste a second. He took the gemstone, opened the system, and ran a full scan on the lingering spatial coordinates and trajectory fluctuations inside it. Data streams rolled rapidly across his vision. A few seconds later, the system finished its analysis.

Elysion's position—

locked.

Ethan fell silent for a moment, but the thought in his mind only grew clearer and sharper.

Then he slowly raised his hand.

"Everyone, hear my order."

The atmosphere in the hall snapped tight.

"From now on, the whole army prepares for war."

His voice was calm, but the decision in it was absolute.

"We're going to build an army that can sweep everything aside—within the shortest time possible."

He paused, and a hotter light gradually rose in his eyes.

"And then—"

"I'll lead you into Elysion."

After he said it, the hall went silent for a heartbeat.

Then every pair of eyes lit up.

They'd grown through constant war and plunder. Keeping them standing still for too long would've felt wrong. Now, the moment they heard they were going to invade a world even more mysterious and powerful than Nexaris, the Dark Abyss, even the Infernal realms—it was like their blood had been set on fire again.

In the time that followed, all of Emerald Castle slipped into a near-mad state.

No one held back. Everyone paid whatever it cost to raise their strength. Every major passage ran day and night without rest. Resources from the Nether Sea, Nexaris, and the Infernal realms poured nonstop into the main city. Armies, troop types, weapons, cores, ore, and origin energy were redistributed and consumed at a speed so exaggerated it bordered on out of control.

And Ethan—

was even crazier than everyone else.

He took the Primordial Force he'd brought back from Nexaris and forcibly absorbed it straight into his own body.

That stuff was violently unstable to begin with. For an ordinary person, forget absorbing it—stay too close for too long and you could get blown apart by the energy leaking off it.

Ethan didn't care about consequences.

Again and again, he drove huge amounts of Primordial Force deep into himself, letting it collide with his original power in a frenzy—fusing, tearing, restructuring, rebuilding.

Before long, layers of semi-transparent energy shells formed around him.

From a distance, it looked like a broken cocoon woven from raging origin itself, sealing him completely inside.

…

Meanwhile.

Elysion—at the heart of the turbulence.

This world was nothing like other Plane Worlds. There was no fixed sky or ground. Instead, there were countless floating titanic rocks, inverted palaces hanging upside down, and rivers of space that flowed without end.

The starlight in the distance seemed close enough to reach out and grab—yet forever untouchable. And beneath everything was a slow-churning black void.

At the deepest point of it all, a massive throne hovered in silence.

Zyraeth sat upon it.

He didn't look like a king in the traditional sense.

In his slightly hollow eyes, there was almost no emotion a normal living thing would have—only bottomless darkness. But if you stared long enough, you'd realize that inside that endless black, an entire field of stars was turning slowly.

"I assume all of you already know."

His voice drifted down from above—not loud, yet enough to make everyone in the hall bow their heads at the same time.

"In another plane, a place called Emerald Castle has appeared."

There was no obvious anger in his tone as he spoke, but there was a colder thing underneath it—something that pressed down harder than rage.

"They are abnormally strong. They wage war everywhere. And they have already taken from us the majority of the regions we once controlled."

The moment he finished, the hall sank into a suffocating silence.

The many high-ranking existences standing along both sides traded looks, but none of them spoke first. Because to them, this had come far too suddenly as well.

Elysion itself was a high-tier Plane World floating inside dimensional turbulence. To leave this place at all, you first had to cross that violently chaotic spatial storm.

But even if luck held and you made it through, what waited outside was something even worse—the Oblivion Sea.

It wasn't a sea in the normal sense. It was a void-region that devoured direction, time, and life. Just those two natural death barriers alone were enough to erase the vast majority of powerhouses before they ever reached a battlefield.

With that reality, "launching an immediate full counterattack" didn't sound practical.

Just as the silence was about to harden into something solid, Khar'vathis—standing below—took a step forward.

The aura around him rippled slightly with the movement. He clearly hadn't forgotten the blood debt between himself and Emerald Castle.

"Your Majesty."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was clear.

"I am your Vanguard Commander. If you will grant me an army, I am willing to personally cross the dimensional turbulence and go destroy Emerald Castle."

There was no attempt to hide the killing intent in his eyes as he said it.

To him, this wasn't just a military operation. It was a reckoning he had to complete.

He'd already lost to Emerald Castle once—his body had even been shattered by them. Now that he'd finally clawed his way back to an opportunity, how could he possibly let it go?

But Zyraeth on the throne didn't answer right away.

He simply fell into a small silence, as if weighing something.