Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

This was a giant humanoid creature that was about three meters tall. It had a black carapace with fine scales and an extremely tough body. It had a pointy pair of sharp horns on its head. Looking at the monster breathing heavily, one could also see that the monster had a pungent scent that smelled like the boiling water from a volcano.

Its eyes were red with vertical slit pupils. The fangs in its mouth and the claws on its limbs were extremely sharp. It seemed that there was also demonic fire combusting faintly around them. Meanwhile, on the back of the monster, there were a few tubes that seemed to be made of chitin, extending out from the surface of its back. Each of the tubes seemed to be spewing red steam.

By the looks of it, that creature was a shredder demon.

Staring upon the dimensional rift right before its eyes, the gigantic monster seemed to be in a daze. Joshua could not help to reveal an excited expression on his face. He clapped his hands and said, “It seems that the book has a very deep connection with the Dark Abyss… Look what I’ve found here.”

“A demon.”

Upon hearing the clapping and speaking voice, that demon seemed to have finally recovered from its shock and saw Joshua. It did not say even a single word. It straight away let out a whining and buzzing sound akin to glass and steel rubbing against each other. This soundwave oscillated all around the atmosphere in the surroundings. They even trigger some visible shockwaves that rushed toward Joshua and the others like a tidal wave. It seemed that the demon wanted to vibrate the molecules of the people in front of it and reduce them to dust.

Meanwhile, at the same time, its own body was actually retreating backward into the dimensional rift at a rapid speed as if it was attempting to flee.

The rift that was forced open by that demon was slowly closing. Noticing that nothing was pursuing its tail, the shredder demon thought that it had gotten away. Facing a horrifying human that seemed as dreadful as its own demon baron, it did not even know how to react. Upon noticing as if it had succeeded in fleeing the scene, the demon instantly let out a sigh of relief. The tubes right on the surface of its back were pumping out a high-temperature red steam.

However, before it could relax, a sound rang near its ear.

Boop.

The sound of something being broken rang in its ears. The demon lowered its head to look at the direction where the sound came from. Instantly, it saw a hand gleaming with golden light come through the rift of the dimension that was almost sealed completely. The hand managed to grab tightly on its ankle.

An enormous force that the demon could not shake off came through. The demon attempted to grab on the surface of the ground to resist the force that was pulling it back. However, where could it find a ground to even grab onto when it was currently in the middle of the dimensional passage? After struggling for a brief moment, the demon felt that its body was going backward like crazy and it even felt its body was flying in the air in the direction where the dimensional rift was.

After an instant, it was thrown heavily onto the ground, and the hand had also changed its target. Now, that hand had switched its position and grabbed onto the head and the horns of the demon. Another enormous strength came gushing through the hand. The shredder demon instantly felt like it was being clipped down by the most powerful iron pliers before it was swiftly dragged closer and closer towards the rift that was once again slowly opening up.

This must not continue to happen! The demon immediately unleashed all of its strength in its body trying to resist the hand that had locked on its head like pliers. It let out a roar and charged its entire body with everlasting demon fire. After that, it lifted its claws that were as sharp as the blades towards the human hand that looked extremely fragile with the attempt to chop it off!

The tremendous force was struck upon that hand. However, nothing had changed. Instead, the hand seemed to feel the struggle of that demon and it started using even more strength to pull the demon. Instantly, a strength that was as powerful as a hydraulic machine crushed one of the sharp horns on the demon’s head! The shape of its skull had also seemed to have changed.

Although suffering from excruciating pain, that demon seemed to still have the strength to resist. However, the hand shook a little, followed by a high-frequency quake coming from the hand and striking the head of the demon, causing the shredder demon to lose consciousness. After that, the hand continued to pull the demon out of the dimensional passage.

Putting his hand into through the dimensional passage, at the same time, ordering Ling to reopen the spellbook, Joshua was gaining access to the dimensional passage by force. When he was subduing that demon, he felt an itch on his hand as if something was tickling his hand inside the dimensional passage. Hence, he put more force in that hand, and shook it.

Then, this demon was dragged out of the dimensional passage easily.

Standing on the land of snow, the warrior was looked at the demon that was passed out right before him. That demon had a sulfurous stench all over its body. The warrior could not help but feel slightly emotional.

Well, it really had been a long time since he saw a demon. Ever since he left Naya Fortress, he had never seen any demon after that.

Joshua knew that his strength was indeed far stronger than the strength of an ordinary Gold-tier being. However, his skills and methods of fighting were unusually complicated and repetitive. Although his Mastery had provided him with many skills, however, most of the skills were not even used once. Meanwhile, his martial art stances and skills were also good for close combat. So in the past few months of hard training, he had been trying to integrate the power of his own body. Hence, his accomplishments were small.

Just now when he was grabbing on the demon, Joshua used a few monk techniques such as the grappling claw of the void, the holy impact of the holy knight, Kokyu-ho, and more. Although it appeared very normal without any flowery scenes, he managed to perform both offensive and defensive skills at the same time. He was just acting practically.

However, the power that the skills could provide him had a limit. Back when he was in the Karlis world confronting the Supreme-tier Aragami, he was bombarded by the enormous strength of the Supreme-tier Aragami until he was struck deep into the ground. At the end of it, he could only rely on the beneficial effects and the recovery ability of the Azurite to be on the same level as Supreme-tier Aragami. That incident had deeply engraved into Joshua’s memory now. He had clearly understood that his skills had a certain limit. Currently, he lacked absolute strength.

Coincidentally, he was about to ascend to Supreme Tier. Currently, he only needed to think carefully and thoughtfully about the next path that he was going to take in the future.

For a Gold tier to advance to Supreme tier, one would be required to choose one aspect to focus on. Just like a person from the very beginning, that person that molds himself all the way from Steel tier to Gold tier. Now, it would be time to transform this piece of metal into some sort of special instrument or weapon.

Skill Mastery, Strength Mastery, and Soul Mastery.

Skill, Strength and Soul, One must choose one out of these three aspects to level up from there, and acquire space and strength that seemed boundless to develop.

In the preexistence, Joshua chose the Skill Mastery path, which led him to possess the strength of Skill Mastery in this life. Hence he would want to choose [Strength Mastery]!

Upon seeing the demon which was regaining consciousness from a great concussion, Joshua straight away stomped his foot upon the center of gravity point on its head.

In the meantime when the demon woke up, it opened up its eyes that seemed like they were blazing vigorously.

That shredder demon had the power level of a Gold-tier in the Mycroft Continent. It was not a weakling even in the Dark Abyss. It was one of the underlings to some demon baron on the fifth floor of hell. Normally, it was in-charged with leading a small troop of demon forces to raid for resources across the continent.

Right in the Dark Abyss, although the environment was extremely harsh, in some strange places, there were also many treasures that were good for the demons. Its job was to go to the depths of some urban places to explore for the resources and treasures. Ever since it was born and transformed into a shredder demon, every day was the same to the demon. It had lived for over 200 years since then.

However, today, the demon which had a boring life was suddenly summoned out of the blue.

In any case, that could not be regarded as a ‘summon’. The demon knew that it was being called upon by some sort of spellbook from some world. This sort of calling should not be the summoning magic circles that were created by the archmages in the mortal world. Instead, it was the true spellbook crafted with the scent of the Dark Abyss which carried the Will of the abyss!

The shredder demon knew that it was different from other foolish demons which only knew how to kill and cause destruction. Perhaps it was because its luck was better. In the process of growing up, its brain was not damaged. Hence its thoughts were clear and logical. At the same time, it also had some knowledge of things.For instance, it understood most of the spellbooks.

There was a great difference between the human-made summoning books and the spellbooks from the dark abyss and that carried the presence of the Evil Gods. For the man-made summoning books, when the demons came out of the summoning, it would be possible that the summoner would be forced into a fierce battle with the demons immediately after the summon. Afterward, the demons would be forced to form a contract with the summoner that won the battle and becomes a servant to the summoner. Meanwhile, for the spellbooks from the dark abyss, because they were summoned by the Will of the abyss, and the book itself had a certain amount of wisdom, so they would avoid those living beings that possessed powerful Order energy. Even if they went to the hands of these beings, they were definitely not going to open up a dimensional rift.

Once the dimensional passage is opened, as long as a demon could cross the passage over to the realm of the humans, the demons could purely torture and slaughter; harvesting souls and resources when they desired.

The demon which could be deemed as a clever one laughed internally. It immediately understood that it had taken another step forward to becoming a true superior demon. It might even get a chance to become a demon baron which owns a territory of its own!

Without even the slightest hesitation, it responded to this calling and entered the dimensional rift. The Dark Abyss had no boundaries at all. It was connected to endless worlds. It was deemed to be the incarnation of all evils and the fallen ones. The place was a necessary existence though. The demon knew that, if it went through the dimensional passage, it would be going to any of the worlds.

One step after another, it walked into the dimensional passage. It was near. It could sense the presence of the sweet souls. It could also sense the living beings that were weak in the materialistic world. The shredder demon could no longer hold back. It wanted to enter the world as swiftly as it could!

Hence, it reached out its claws that were as sharp as the blades, its greatest weapon of all. As long as it was willing to, these claws that were blazing with demon flames from hell could tear apart most of the substances in the world.

Just when the spellbook was corrupting the dimension, weakening the barrier as much as possible, that demon could no longer wait patiently as it tore the dimensional barrier and left a large crack in it. It then used its own red eyes looking at the world right behind the other side of the dimensional rift.

Then it saw a human being, a man.

The man looked like the kind that would strike a deep impression at the first glance. Set aside his physical appearance, the man possessed a significant aura that could crush the earth into dust. His spiritual pressure transformed into an aura of despair that came through. The demon had instantly thought that it was looking at a dreadful demon of its own kind. However, on the next instant, it knew that it was wrong.

That was a man! And that man was extremely powerful! That man was carrying the power of Order along with his body as well!

That power was not weaker than its own lord baron. If that power was combined with the suppression of the Order energy… even its baron would not be able to match the dreadful human right in front of it!

This was a trap!

Three major revelations came together, along with the impact of Spiritual Attack and surprises for falling into a trap. Faced with this human warrior that appeared to be more terrifying than its own demon baron, these revelations that dawned upon the demon had him stunned for a while.

This was also a flaw in a being with high wisdom. Any ordinary idiotic demon would have turned around and started fleeing without saying a single word nor having a single thought. As the embodiment of evil and chaos, the demons had always loved to battle with a large number of themselves against a small number of their enemies. They just loved to trample over the weak. Fleeing upon encountering a strong living being would be their very standard and basic rule. Only those demons with true high wisdom would possess the basic instinct to crave for blood in battle.

Unfortunately, it did not manage to flee successfully.

Finally, woken up from the confusion and concussion, that demon immediately felt that its head and its body’s center of gravity had been stepped on by a man. The strength of the pressure was too much that it could not get back up on its feet. Meanwhile, a powerful Combat Aura that carried along immense Order force was aimed at its head from afar, discouraging it from moving an inch.

Meanwhile, the owner of that leg, Joshua, seemed to be interested as he looked at the demon that was subdued by him. With a wave of his hand, he asked Ling to close the ‘Book of Eibon’ and shut the dimensional rift completely to cut off any last hope of the demon from escaping.

The moment when the dimensional passage was closed, the demon noticed that there was some sort of a power that came from the outer side of this world maintaining the existence of this book. Meanwhile, the power that activated the dimensional rift came from that source as well.

“An Upper Gold-tier shredder demon. This is truly interesting.”

Joshua muttered to himself, “At first, I just wanted to have a look at how powerful a terraria dhole worm is, or just destroy the book. But I’ve never expected to encounter an Upper Gold-tier shredder demon.”

Joshua could be deemed as a human being that understood demons the best. He had slain more than tens of thousands of upper tier demons. He even slew lower tier demons more than anyone could count. Well, he wouldn’t even want to count in the first place. The warrior knew clearly that these demons were simple-minded. It would not be possible to subdue them with brute force. As they were all too dumb to begin with, it would be just a dream that they could be humiliated or tortured to provide information that the warrior wanted to know about.

Therefore, Joshua did not waste his breath communicating with the demon. It would just be meaningless. He simply used his Combat Aura to form a sharp blade in his hand. Then he straight away cut into the body of the demon and observed the internal flesh that looked like they were combusting on in order to get the information he wanted.

Shortly afterward, Joshua was done with observing the dying demon. He nodded and muttered to himself, “There is no change in the physical aspect. It is almost exactly the same as in the past life. Then it seems that the weaknesses are similar as well. Not bad, this should do it.”

The vitality of a Gold-tier demon would definitely be more than this. They were dreadful creatures that could till fight even after their heads were cut off. However, Joshua possessed an Azurite, and he was also a Chaos Guardian. He was the very existence that could deal tremendous damage to demons. His Combat Aura that carried Order energy could cut into demons’ fleshes and disrupt their auto-healing abilities. Regardless of how much vitality this demon had, it was about to die anyway.

Meanwhile, for Joshua, what significance would he get from merely one demon? After getting the desired information, he would kill it straightaway and end its misery. Since he already had the Book of Eibon in his hands now, he could just summon as many demons as he wanted to.

It seemed that the shredder demon was still attempting to struggle as it was attempting to speak something in an unknown tongue. However, Joshua did not understand even the slightest bit of the heavy accent that came from the mouth of the demon. He even thought that the demon was just cursing him with vulgar words. So he let out a sigh at the will of the demon to battle and kicked the demon. The demon passed out by that powerful kick. After that, he called Ling to come over.

Ling was looking at the spellbook that was called Book of Eibon. There were quite a lot of strange and bizarre information about demon curses and sacrificial rituals that were all written in the common language of this world. There were also a lot of strange sentences engraved in some strange language as well. However, the young Divine Armament seemed to be very engrossed reading the book. Although he could not understand the demon curses or the strange language, however, it would still be a good thing to enrich his own databank by inputting these information first. He could decipher them and understand them later anyway.

Summoning of ghouls, hell’s dhole worms, and all sorts of demons… there were so many selections. Unfortunately for him, he could not understand even the slightest bit about how to carry out the summoning rituals.

Just when the young male Divine Armament was sighing, he heard his master calling him over. So Ling closed the book and walked up to Joshua.

“Come, perform a Divine Armament transformation now.”

The warrior said concisely, “Didn’t you say you are really close to advance into a new tier? This is a great timing. The demons are just like the Aragami. They’re part of Chaos as well. This is a Gold-tier demon. If we kill it together now, you will be able to advance to a new tier.”

After that, the warrior could not help but let out a sigh.

These Experience Points came at an impeccably good timing.

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