Soul of Searing Steel

Chapter 1044: Three Worlds, Nine Skies: the Land of Ashes

[My mentor, the respected baroness Karlis, is a famous astrologer, astronomer, and Professor of alchemical engineering. She was the winner of the fifty-second installment of the moving city competition held once every hundred years, which was in turn the greatest accomplishment of the Three Worlds, Nine Skies super construction engineering. In return, the Heavenly Sword Empress of the Radiant Domain had bestowed upon her the title of baroness, even naming an entire mobile realm after her.

Apart from that, she is a legend, a great continental adventurer whose fame extends over three worlds. Over the endlessly vast continent of Steel, she has discovered eight stable stellar realms and determined the patterns of those stellar cycles—now, these eight stable stellar realms have become new borders of the Radiant Domain Alliance, with millions of immigrants driving new moving cities in pursuit of the sunlight over there.

It is all thanks to my mentor.]

[As a student to Professor Karlis, I feel both honor and humility, for I could live my whole life and yet remain unable to surpass her in any aspect, even if by just a little.

However, it was at this time that Professor Karlis’s close friend, Lady Mycroft, grand scholar and my superior, would console me by saying, ‘there is always someone who has to act as a foil in a group. Why couldn’t it be you? It is your duty.’

To tell the truth, I am not quite sure what Lady Mycroft had meant. However, her tone was really sincere, so I shall consider it as encouragement from a superior.]

[Professor Karlis has a lot of apprentices, most of whom are studying mobile world designing under her tutelage. After all, the more that technology develops, the faster the worlds can move, allowing each of them to assimilate into the Steel Continent of a star in a certain sector before moving on to the next stable stellar sector in the shortest time possible. Naturally, it would be also easier to repel the ambushes by the Chaos aberrations roaming the dark zones between the many stellar regions, and being one of the most important academic subjects of the Radiant Domain, it is a symbol of civilizations’ future.

That being said, I had not actually been a student of my mentor in that subject, but merely an assistant hired by her on a temporary basis while she surveyed a Steel Continent. She was willing to take me in a student and instruct me in regards to explorations, which was my good fortune—I had benefited plenty from that, and while neither here nor there, I am still a well-known scholar in astrology and exploration, building a family of my own inside the Radiant Domain.]

[However, my mentor has recently run into some trouble.

Lady Mycroft Zeluya, her close friend and my superior, had mysteriously disappeared in the middle of an expedition into the Nightfall Zone. Before she had gone missing, Lady Mycroft had transmitted a map charted from her journey and a diary through a secret psionic communications channel to my elegant, wise, and morally sensible mentor. Since then, my mentor had always appeared anxious, even occasionally clasping her head and muttering to herself.

‘Is that so? To think that had actually happened…time flies, and it has been so long…’

That was what I heard in one of her mutterings when I brought her a coffee with twice the usual amount of sugar. Was she talking about the time she shared with Lady Mycroft? It appears that Lady Mycroft’s disappearance has been huge blow to her.]

[Be that as it may, I had never imagined that my mentor, with all her accomplishments and fame, would actually return to a life of adventuring—after she had straightened her affairs and properties in the Radiant Domain, the famous scholar purchased an Ark-class continental exploration vessel, throwing away every gem ornament and enchanting formal clothes she had been wearing for a worn tank top and long pants, and tied her hair into a ponytail. Soon, hundreds of professional explorers who, attracted by her fame, joined her party, hence launching the second expedition into the Nightfall Zone under the leadership of the legendary explorer!]

The hand of a middle-aged man reached out, stroking the text written in an old diary under a light.

The man’s soft sigh could be heard as he stared at the words itself while falling into a moment of recollection.

“Mentor…” he whispered, and smiled bitterly.

***

Three Worlds, Nine Skies was the name of the world—as the name itself suggested, it was three different realms in which all life inhabited: The Steel Continent, which was the central realm, along with the Sky Blade Realm, and the Earthen Axe Realm, which intersected the central realm. In turn, the Nine Skies were nine massive floating supercontinents located above the Steel Continent that blocked out the sun. Regrettably, the exceedingly terrific gravity which the Steel Continent exuded meant none had ever climbed atop the Nine Skies, and even the gods could only gaze upon them from afar and sigh.

Countless suns hovered over the endlessly wide continent, permeating the nine layers of skies and ground, the dazzling sunlight blessing lifeforce upon the endless ecosystems in the continent.

The Steel Continent was vast and endless. Whether it had been during the Age of Gods a hundred thousand years ago or the Age of Chaos fifty thousand years ago, no explorer could ever reach its horizon. On the other hand, its center was a bright ‘ring’ shrouded beneath massive clusters of stars, and was known as the Radiant Domain.

The Radiant Domain was also the center of all nations and races. In the Steel Continent, one did not have to worry about stars colliding—after they had shattered, diminished, and left the world in darkness, perpetuating a cycle in which each star took turns to die and be reborn, fall, and rise, every civilization in the ring would still bask in eternal radiance thanks to the many suns. Likewise, they did not have to worry about being attacked by the Chaos aberrations living in the darkness.

On the other hand, the Nightfall Zone referred to areas beyond the Radiant Domain where the stars were scattered without the assurance of each place being illuminated at all times. The Steel Continent’s own tremendous gravitational force would also pull the rare few stars down to the ground where they would dissolve into gases. Although the Steel Continent itself would always reassemble the gases to create a new star, it would take hundreds or thousands of years. Unlike the Radiant Domain, the Nightfall Zone did not have over hundreds of stars that would keep shining upon its lands after one falls to the ground.

That had been why the colonies that the various nations were establishing there came in the form of massive moving worlds, each of which had to be able to carry billions of citizens and streak over the various continents. They had to escape the destruction of the falling stars while eternally pursuing the other hovering stars to capture their light.

That had also been the precise reason why all life living on the Steel Continent came to be known as Lightchasers, regardless of the uniqueness of their appearances.

Moreover, even after coming fully prepared, there would different circumstances that prevented moving worlds from reaching other areas with sun before their energy reserves were exhausted, leaving every lifeform in the world to die in the frost or be consumed by the Chaos of the darkness—in the end, any stable stellar realm proved to be extremely rare and extremely precious, because each meant a living environment similar to the Radiant Domain, allowing the survival of billions and a dozen moving worlds.

That was also why the Nightfall Zone was extremely dangerous, and the reason why explorers would often run into fallen worlds from millennia past in their journeys. Moreover, the Chaos aberrations of the Lightless Zone beyond the Nightfall Zone would occasionally lurk within Nightfall Zone itself—as the sun set and its light diminished, they would attack the mobile cities even as they tried to move away.

It was said that the divine beings of the Age of Gods a hundred thousand years ago could create stars in the Nightfall Zone, before constructing large clusters of floating cities around them, or even colossal energy arrays that covered an entire star—in turn establishing stable sectors of light and civilizations of glory. However, all the gods mysteriously lost all divine power fifty thousand years ago, with the endless floating cities hence crashing down. Even the cages of energy that kept stars bounded were unable to withstand the exceeding gravity from the Steel Continent after losing the divine power that kept them together, falling and crumbling alongside stellar bodies, meeting their end on the continent.

It had been age of darkness that lasted over twenty thousand years—endless beings perished and countless civilizations fell. As the endless radiance diminished, the infinite aberrations of Chaos lurking in the Lightless Zone swarmed out. They were the greatest natural enemies of living beings and civilizations, and without the light inhibiting them, they consumed everything within reach without restraint. Moreover, having lost the protection of the gods, every being was simply unable to withstand the devastation which had came so abruptly, and could only keep retreating back into Radiant Domain from the Nightfall Zone.

Even now, the horrific remains that lingered on after that war could still be encountered in remote corners of the Nightfall Zone, where the shrill winds still appeared to be howling.

However, it was in that moment of despair that endless radiance had come, bestowed from the realms of Sky Blade and Earthen Axe.

They were a sacred blade and a divine axe, along with millions of other ‘weapons’ of different make. The worlds, which had been motionless since ancient times and intersecting with the Steel Continent, then suddenly descended, slaying the boundless Chaos. Unable to fight the Chaos then, the Lightchasers hence picked up the ‘divine tools’ which were descending from the world itself—the heroic sacrifices of countless heroes hence ended the Age of Chaos, banishing every Chaos aberration back to the Lightless Zone.

The Lighchasers were hence convinced that the divine tools were forged from the remains of the gods, while any being who had any sort of control over the Heaven Splitting Blade and the Demon Cleaving Axe would become the highest leader of the Radiant Domain Alliance, the Heavenly Sword Empress and the Demon Cleaving Ruler. Regardless of who they were—criminal, exiles, anyone who could control those divine tools would be automatically exonerated from any transgressions and promoted as a noble amongst the Alliance, hence entrusted with the duty of border guard.

***

[The Heavenly Sword Empress had personally come to bid farewell to my mentor, even giving her blessing for a safe voyage and return, as well as the mentor’s ship, the Rekindling. For my own part, I had been unable to follow my mentor on her journey as it was when my eldest daughter was born, and it must be said that it was a great regret. Even so, the magnanimous Professor Karlis did not accuse an assistant such as myself of dereliction of duty, instead giving her blessings for my daughter and also gladly giving her a name—it was an honor to myself and my daughter, and a fortune for that daughter of mine.]

[“Name her Simboa. That is the name I remember and that she should have… I must say it is quite nostalgic too. As for you, you certainly have quite the intertwining fates.”]

[Although my mentor’s words had been bizarre, her sincerity and earnest blessing had not been fake. Still, that was how my eldest daughter, Simboa Falster, got her name—her smile as she chewed on her fingers is my life’s greatest happiness.]

[A dozen years had passed. Professor Karlis’s exploits were fruitful, having discovered several ruins of floating cities dating back to the Age of Chaos and whole new stable stellar realms as she roamed the world. She appeared to be especially gifted in that respect, possessing a unique smell that could detect the scents of places hospitable for living beings. While it would sound disrespectful, I always believed that it had nothing to do with my mentor’s academic qualifications, but had instead everything to do with a heaven-given talent!

In that period, my second child was about to be born. It was a boy, but just when I was thinking about what to name him, the grievous news reached me.]

[It had been a gloomy afternoon. The artificial skies of Academy City were slowly closing and absorbing sunlight at full capacity, whereas the many scholars living there got off work and returned home to rest. I happened to be reading through the theses of several students when I unexpectedly received communications from another fellow pupil of the mentor—that was when I learned in shock that my mentor, who had been always overflowing with a spirit of adventure, had returned to the embrace of Light in the distant depths of the Nightfall Zone: a falling star had suddenly crashed down upon the Steel Continent, the resulting inferno consuming everything within three light-months. My mentor, hundreds of professional explorers, and twenty-five hundred crewmembers had thus melted into the overly dazzling light.]

[My mentor had died in an honorable journey, a tragic news that spread throughout the Radiant Domain. Both the Heavenly Sword Empress and the Demon Cleaver Ruler indicated that the passing of Baroness Karlis was a great loss for all Lightchasers, and decreed a three minute silent mourn amongst all citizens living in colonies within stable stellar realms which she had discovered. It was the greatest honor as a scholar, although I still could not believe that the elegant and wise scholar and the most famous watcher of the stars would actually perish in such a simple astronomical phenomenon. Even so, reality was reality—she was not coming back, and in my grieving insanity, I actually regretted not dying with her in that profound expedition.

Soon, however, there was more shocking discoveries. Half a year after my mentor had passed away and all the shockwaves had subsided, I abruptly received an extremely encrypted psionic communication. What it turned out to be was a secret will my mentor had left for me!

It includes a small but advanced exploration vessel, substantial reaches, data crystals that were almost used up in capacity, and most importantly, the star maps of every region my mentor had explored! What was more, there were also several points in those maps that were labeled with special symbols, and incidentally, the region of one of those symbols was also the precise location of where she had ‘died’! In addition, there were also several markers and trails going beyond the present Nightfall Zone, reaching the depths of the Lightless Zone!

And Professor Karlis had given all of those things to me without asking for anything in return, even leaving a ‘prophecy’ that appeared to have profound meaning.]

[Cometh the tinder’s drying, cometh the Inferno’s rekindling]

My student, Alpha Falster.

You are not an ordinary mortal but a child of Silver Fairies, and though you may not be aware of the purpose of your existence, I am.

Go forth, to the edge of the Steel Continent and the world’s frontier. You must open that door and go to the center of the continent—to the core of the Three Worlds and extinguish the present flame.

It is something only you can do now.

[I left a month later, biding farewell to my family and leaving them well-off before I resolved myself to explore all that was unknown with the star maps that my mentor had left. Although I was not sure of what the professor was saying, I was distinctly aware that it was something that only I could accomplish—I would become the greatest explorer of the Steel Continent, a dream of mine which had been sealed beneath love and responsibility. But now, with my mentor’s will and the awakened heart of curiosity, I decided with selfishness to resume my voyage and undertake the journey which belongs only to myself.]

[There was no one else other than myself and twenty AI crewmembers. I could faintly discern the dark tides shrouding my mentor, and simply did not dare let anyone else in on what had happened—all I had said was that I had the sudden impulse to go out for a round trip alone, which was nothing unusual, because explorers have always been people who would stride out the door whenever they have the impulse to do so, never returning for decades.]

[The expedition ship that my mentor left me was remarkably advanced. Drawing energy from the sun, I soon warped away from the Radiant Domain and reached the Nightfall Zone. I felt out of practice at first, since my last voyage had been decades before—I had actually misidentified coordinates and took a detour of dozens of thousands of light-years, but as my knowledge soon fired up, I was once again that helpful assistant of the great adventurer… although this time, I was the captain.

That being said, I was puzzled to find the number of colonies of Nightfall not increasing but decreasing instead. As I roamed familiar grounds spanning over 700,000 light-years and passed by hundreds of colonies, I realized that one-thirds of the stars were missing. It was simply unusual—decades were brief periods for the stars shining above the Steel Continent which shone for millennia, and even when their final fates would be to crash down to the ground, they would not have ended up with a third of their numbers disappearing in such a short time.

As I continued my journey, more discoveries verified my theory: the stars were rapidly decreasing, regardless if they were able to nurture life or otherwise. Originally, only one-trillionth of the endless stars hanging above the Steel Continent were the ones which we had used and was where life originated. Likewise, over the hundreds of thousands of light-years of land in the Nightfall Zone, only hundreds of stars hung at optimum height and were suitable for our use. Unlike the Age of Gods when the various divine beings could move floating continents and freely adjust distances so that there were more suns that could be used, Lightchasers such as us who were bound by gravity onto the ground could only pray.

Perhaps because I had been staying in the Radiant Domain where there were endless stars and I was hence not perceptive about their numbers, I could now clearly see everything in the Nightfall Zone, where each star was immeasurably precious. Still, those scarce few hundreds of stars had still been reduced by a third, and many moving worlds which I had been familiar with could no longer be seen. The citizens had also disappeared quietly, nowhere to be found. I was convinced that it was no coincidence, and that the same thing was happening even if I head for any colony zone several million light-years away.]

[The disappearance of the stars and the death of my mentor—no, her disappearance, must be connected to something! To search for the truth, I began to journey deep into the Nightfall Zone in search of any possible clues. There were signs of evidence near the colonies being erased by someone, the orbits which stars shifted from no longer existing, but I still believe that no one could remove all traces of all those billions of stars. There must have been clues they could not destroy in the depths of the Nightfall Zone.

Soon, with the star maps which my mentor had left me, I took a safe path and ventured far into the Nightfall Zone. There were just a few scattered border cities and no full colonies, but that was where I had found a definitive clue! I could see the trails in which thousands of stars were slipping just beneath the Nine Skies, the dimensional scar which their movements left so distinct that I could instantly see where they were moving towards.

In fact, the direction they were heading towards was my home—the ring of the Radiant Domain.]

[I have to say that I was puzzled then. Why? The stars of the Radiant Domain were infinite and there was no lack of illumination, just as I had never felt any sign of dimming…there were many scholars who had actually recently suggested for stars from the Radiant Domain to be moved to the Nightfall Zone, so as to develop more colonies, or the living areas in the Radiant Domain would be overpopulated as life flourished.

Could it be that they were planning to gather the stars from Nightfall to expand the Radiant Domain instead? Still, that would be too costly and unrewarding—pulling stars is not easy, and there had been no more than twenty people known to be able to do that, save for the Heavenly Sword Empress and the Demon Cleaving Ruler. Moreover, they would never be able to move billions of stars in just decades even if they worked together! There must be a greater mystery behind all this!]

[With those questions in my head, I ended my first voyage and returned home in exhaustion—but what received me was neither my family’s smiles nor their blaming, disgusted faces at me for being gone for so long…in fact, I would rather have faced the disgust, because what I could only find then was an empty home and a letter left by the Order of Ashes.

The Order had been a mysterious religious organization that appeared after the fall of the gods. They had control over many divine items and had declared those to be the ashes remaining of the gods after their descent. Moreover, although they served the Heavenly Sword Empress and the Demon Cleaving Ruler as their leaders in name, they were actually controlled by a circle of elders who held the authority of granting or recalling the divine items.

We were basically people from two different worlds: they were a violent political group with genuine authority, while I was a merely a scholar from Academy City, and yet I was so callously threatened by them on this day—with cold words, the letter had informed me that my family was being detained in a distant place while warning me to cease my attempts in probing into the stellar phenomenon in the Nightfall Zone, as well as to leave the Radiant Domain.

If their warning were to go unheeded, there would be no assurance of my family’s safety, and I would face certain death.]

[To prove their own resolve, they had even left a tiny hand behind—my son’s hand. Certainly, if I would not obey them, they would be sending me his skull next.

Aside from rage, my mind was also full of terror. I had then awakened from a grand illusion to realize that I was no more than an ordinary person, and without the halo of Professor Karlis, I was no more than a barely-known explorer and a normal astrologer. Resisting the Order of Ashes? All they had to do was just slide some ‘hints’ at the leaders of Academy City to have all my honors stripped and reduced to dust.]

[Come to think of it, would they not have had something to do with Professor Karlis’s disappearance? I would never believe that a being that could pull stars and the ‘accident’ of the falling star were not connected at all.

But so what if I drowned in my own disbelief and disgruntlement? I was defeated and all I could do was run. I hence returned to the craft that my mentor had given me and aimlessly roamed the Nightfall Zone… but could I really abandon the truth so easily? Whether it was the professor’s disappearance, the skewing of the stars, or where my missing family was…they threatened me with their fates, and yet never gave me any sign that they were alive. On what grounds should I believe that they would merely keep them alive and simply detain them?]

[Either way, all I could do was go as far as I could and stop looking at the movements of the stars, heading so distant that I reached the borders of the world, the depths of Nightfall.]

[In hate, anguish, self-blame, helplessness, and the most profound of doubt, I had arrived upon the Lightless Zone, one of the labeled blinks on my mentor’s star map.]

***

A middle-aged man stroked the words over the diary. The ink over the last paragraph were still clear, seemingly having been written only recently. Soon, the diary was closed and placed inside a backpack.

“Mentor, I am here, as you have instructed.”

Over a rather dwarfed hill, the man looked out towards the distant light from beside a sleek but sturdy exploration vessel which appeared very advanced.

Standing over the hill that was just a mere seventeen hundred and twenty-nine meters tall, which was about the summit of two moving worlds, the man with silver hair and red eyes, the child of a Silver Fairy, kept his tired and melancholic gaze at the distant brightness.

He could see millions of suns hovering over the infinite Steel Continent, bringing bright light to all darkness—in turn, there was also Chaos swarms moving along in the darkness, lurking and waiting in the gloom where the sun never reached, for the day that all the cities chasing after the suns would lose their protection.

Likewise, he could see the great star at the very heart of the Three Worlds and Nines Skies, which could never be seen from the Radiant Domain or the Nightfall Zone!

It was incomparably massive and heavy, its sheer presence no different from a dark titanic stellar body which had consumed every other state of existence, and appeared very capable of destroying everything!

In fact, the entire Steel Continent was merely an accretion disk surrounding the giant dark star, while the other endless stars surrounding it were merely faint radiant mist—even the Radiant Domain where all civilization and all life rested was just a thin, narrow, irregular ring-shaped area that encircled it.

Was it even a star? How could it be so massive! In any given moment, the giant dark star was drawing everything to itself, having them whirl just as it rotated, as if it had been the axis of the three worlds and nine skies itself!

The man could see that at its edge, the fringes of the Steel Continent which touched it was releasing great illumination. The countless stars of the Radiant Domain hovered over that same light, emanating inexhaustive vigor…even so, any intelligent being and individual would, for some reason, would know instinctively that the giant star which shone upon the Radiant Domain and nurtured the boundless living radiance was already dead.

It had long since been quenched, and everything that existed now—the millions of stars and the boundless light—were merely the remaining ashes of the world’s most glorious time.

“Cometh the tinder’s drying, cometh the Inferno’s rekindling.”

Karlis’s apprentice, Mycroft’s lackey, Simboa’s father.

Now, the mortal man called Alpha Falster was quietly mumbling to himself puzzledly.

“Could it be that the dark star…is it the one that needs rekindling?”