Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

Faced with a fierce battle outside the city that shook the earth and the mountains, the elves in the city were overwhelmed with fear. Their hearts were filled with hatred and helplessness.

This was their world, their kingdom. So theoretically speaking, they should be the ones that were battling against those monsters to defend their own cities, their homes. Even if they were destined to die in the battle, at least they would have died without regret as they had tried their best to defend their home.

But now, they felt so humiliated as they were all hiding in the underground shelters, trembling and waiting for the stranger to return as the victor of this battle—or they were just waiting for the stone giants to crush them with a single stomp—regardless of whether to battle, to flee, or to die, the choices are no longer in their own hands.

In the meantime, right in a spacious room in the town hall at the center of the city, many elves stared at the giant screen in mid-air as they held their breaths looking at the situation outside the city through the screen that could only project blurry scenes of the battle.

The mists in the light screen was dispersing layer by layer as if influenced by some sort of power in the surroundings. Even the dark clouds were thinning. The thunder, the heavy rain, and the haze have vanished without a trace within seconds, revealing clusters of stars shining brightly in the night sky.

However, none of them is concerned about that. Their full attention is focused on the center of the light screen. They were staring at the ‘mountain’ that carried the surface of steel.

That ‘mountain’ was at least a few hundred meters tall. It was monstrous! Its body is covered with bizarre and wretched lights, surrounded with bright green light. The body of that mountain is covered in strange, distorted runes. At one glance, the mountain gave off a sick feeling.

Now, the mountain trembled restlessly. Subtle streams of thunder and lightning were seen all over its body with irregular dents all over its body as well. Those dents were the sources that pushed the mist and the clouds away, causing the sky to reveal the star beyond the clouds and the mists.

Upon seeing that, a middle-aged elf, who was sitting in the front row, trembled. Even though he was only observing the situation from a light screen, he could still sense the chill up his spine. The elf shut his eyes as he muttered to himself softly and in despair, “The golems can actually fuse themselves together… Were all the battles with them in the past simply a child’s play?”

Those soldiers who put their lives and souls on the line just to defend their homes and kingdoms managed to prevail just because these golems have yet to be reveal their true selves? Were the golems even bothered by the military army at all?

Because of the presence of the previous fogs, the elves could not see the scene where the Stone Giants merged themselves into one. However, based on their movements and previous behaviours, anyone could guessed or catch a glimpse of an idea about what was happening. However, because of the observation angle, he also did not see that the warrior had charged into the depth of the mountain. He thought Joshua had fled from the scene, or maybe died trying to defend it and the other elves.

Having thought that even the heavenly powerful being from another world could not defeat the enemy, fear began to spread across the room. A tremendous stress dawned on them like tough and heavy feeling stuck in the throats of every single elf in the room, rendering them unable to speak. A young elf smiled like it was the end of the world. He even took out a gun from the side of his waist as he pointed the muzzle of his gun right at his forehead. He was ready to relieve himself from the depressing present. Although he is stopped by his friends beside him, everyone in the room was feeling even more stressed than before.

“What exactly is that thing?!”

Someone struggling against his mental breakdown, broke out with a raging voice, “Why—Why would such monsters appear in our world?!”

However, no one could answer that and so, they remained silent.

A silence of despair overwhelmed everything.

Another light shone all the way to the horizon of the sky.

The night sky is illuminated by the red light, and the darkness was torn by it. However, that was not a light that carried hope—it was a venomous flame that came straight from hell. The magic circle that was formed by ten light wheels had once again appeared high up in the sky of this world, before the elves who were all numbed by the overwhelming sense of despair. It looked like a humongous projection from the outside world that brought along meteors.

This time, the location that the meteors would land was no longer the outskirts of the lands nor the forests. The meteors were going to land right in the center of the capital city in Babel Province—

The center of the city.

Black spotted the bizarre change in the sky. The draconic horse let out a long roar. Then it unleashed beams of full-powered blasts right from the core in its chest, destroying the meteors as swiftly as it could. However, the power of the draconic horse was limited. The number of the meteors that were descending from the heaven seems to be endless. With Black struggling to intercept the meteors from causing destruction upon the capital city for a few minutes, the first meteor finally slipped through the defence of the draconic horse as it successfully landed on the east side of the capital city.

Dragging a long tail of flame, the blazing boulder spun violently as it crashed into a tall building. The tall building is immediately crushed and shattered into many pieces of gravels and scattering rocks, scattering all over the air. Dust and sand were hurled up into the air by the impact of the meteor crashing upon the building. The shockwave of that impact had hurled up a wave of violent wind—far more violent than the winds of a hurricane. Everything on the streets were blown away like they were nothing.

The blazing fire began to spread rapidly along the squally winds. In just one brief instant, half of the city is engulfed in the sea of flames, endangering the refugees that were hidden underground. The lights in the ground were all extinguished at once. Gravels and dusts were falling overhead the refugees in the darkness. The narrow refuge shelter instantly became a living hell filled with mourning and crying. Countless refugees began to panic as they wanted to leave the dangerous place that could collapse anytime now. However, the entrances of the sanctuary have all collapsed and were blocked. Though the huge underground space was supposed to be extremely strong, and even if the place did not collapse, all of the refugees would still not be able to get out of the underground sanctuary when it is all over.

If there was a first, there would be a second, a third, and a fourth. Even after Black went all out in attempting to blast every single meteor off the sky, it could only destroy a few dozens of the meteors raining down from the heaven. There were more than just a few dozens of meteors showering on the capital city of Babel Province. Roland stood beside Black. He actually had the will to aid Black in taking out the meteors before they destroyed the city. However, he did not possess the strength to do that. He was merely a holy knight after all. Even Joshua is not be capable of stopping so many meteors from landing on earth. So how would it be possible for a holy knight to accomplish that?

Hence, under the raging stare of a man and a dragon, the meteors crash-landed onto the city one after another as they crushed the buildings and other existence in the city. The impacts were extremely powerful causing the fire to spread rapidly across the city. The entire city was instantly turned into a sea of fire, completely destroyed.

The disastrous scenario did not happen only in one city. The meteors rained in all of the cities across all the nine provinces where many living beings gathered around in one place. The meteor rain fell as if the gods were punishing the world by fire. Each of the meteor rain fell in places where the population is the highest in their own regions. Only the Central region of the Confederation prevailed in defending themselves against the horrific attacks of the meteors because they were able to use advanced technology that was still in the preliminary stages of its development.

In just a few minutes, the death toll of the Bay Confederation hit millions, and still is still increasing by the seconds. Many were simply trying to survive the onslaught of the meteor attacks because they were hidden well in the shelters. The number of those who died became a horrifically high. The more terrifying thing about the situation was that many golems are descending as if they would not rest until they have wiped out every single existence of life on earth.

In Babel Province, Rock Puppets were slowly rising from the giant pit of flames. The two light spots on their heads flickered as if they were analysing the situation around them through the processing of the magic circles that were embedded within their heads. Golden lines are seen lined from the top of their heads. They crushed the ground with powerful impacts that trembling the earth, stirring dust into the air.

It takes a few months to construct a building. Constructing a city would require years to accomplish. Meanwhile, establishing and constructing a country or a kingdom would require the efforts of a few generations to form a proper civilization. A civilization could take up a few hundreds or even thousands of years before it could be moulded into shape.

However, destroying them only takes a few seconds.

Right in the sky, the mysterious light wheels rotated slowly. No one in the world knows its origin. And no one knows what lies beyond that thing. Other than sending golems to earth to wipe out all living beings, no one in this world knows its other purposes and motives.

Perhaps it really only wants to destroy.

Under the illumination of the light wheel, the golem army that looked like an army of puppets were destroying everything that were in their paths. They marched forward in unison. The earth trembled in time with the footsteps of the golems. Occasionally, several golems would merge themselves into stone giants.

In less than ten minutes, the elven cities that were once peaceful and prosperous have turned into a completely different world. The entire world looks desolated like hell on earth.

Right on the top of the hill near the Thunderous Mountain that Joshua was currently engaged with, the draconic horse and the holy knight witnessed everything around them with raging eyes as they gritted their teeth. The holy knight tightened his fists until they were pale. If they were not worried about Joshua’s safety, the two of them would have gone back to the city to annihilate the golems and the stone giants that were wreaking havoc in the city.

Truth to be told, the lives of the elves in this world had nothing to do with them at all. Regardless of whether they were alive or dead, it doesn’t matter at all. None of them were friends to the draconic horse and the holy knight. As creatures from another world, strictly speaking, these elves might not even be seen as people to begin with. It remained a question that had yet to be answered.

Well, they are not supposed to be angry about it—things should have remained that way.

However, anger was never a reasonable emotion to begin with.

Black let out an angry roar. Its eyes looked as if they were blazing with golden flames. Even though the draconic horse did not stay long with the elves, it felt that it was quite interesting to live with them. These beings have been treating it respectfully when it was here in this world. They even worshipped Black for it had helped them in the past.

The goodwill of the people around would make any living being with wisdom feel joy and happiness.

Furthermore, it remembered the little elven boy who approached him without even the slightest fear in his eyes. It also remembered the white-haired old man who had strange and bizarre accent. Both of them have become Black’s new friends—However, at this moment, Black had no way of knowing whether both of them were dead or alive. The cities were on fire. The golems were destroying everything, everywhere they go.

The holy knight appeared unexpectedly calm. He had already channeled his fury while he was having a conversation with Joshua a moment earlier. Though his heart was filled with anger as well, he knew what he was supposed to do.

The civilization, which consist of many elves, was currently under attack by an unknown Evil God. Having encountered the [Famine], the [Pestilence], and the [Abyss], this should be the fourth Evil God that the warrior and others have encountered so far. They knew nothing about such terrifying existence. They know only very little about the Chaos as the historical records did not store much information about them. Under the circumstance where they know nothing about their enemies, they are forced to engage into a battle with a massive army of the Chaos just because the dimensional passage is sealed shut for the moment—they were in a situation that was far more perilous than they could have ever imagined.

“Now, it is all up to Joshua now.”

Tightening both of his fists, Roland stared at the trembling Thunderous Mountain. Then he spoke in a deep voice, “If he can take out this humongous fellow, then the situation could change for the better.”

Or else, no one in this world would be able to escape the horrific web-like attacks from the Thunderous Mountain.

Meanwhile, within the mountain peak.

Joshua, who is being spoken of by the others, is currently penetrating into the gigantic vein that is formed from rocks.

Instead of blood veins, they looked more like passages or tunnels within the Thunderous Mountain. The interior of the mountain, that was slightly metallic, is filled with caves and tunnels surging with rapid flow of magic energy. Joshua went along with the flow of the Magic energy as he made his way to the core of the Thunderous Mountain.

Along the way, he saw numerous magical runes flickering on the stony walls of the cave with a mysterious trajectory. Glancing at them, the warrior recognized all of the runes he saw embedded in the walls. Those were the superior runes such as [Vitality Activation], [Thunderbolt Divine Vein], [Fusion], and [Indestructible Barrier] that could even be the secret inheritances from the Mycroft Continent.

The more Joshua looked at the runes, the heavier Joshua’s heart became.

Evil God ‘Famine’ was born out of the remains of the Crystal Insect Yurmadais species that carried the resentments of the world being devoured completely. Although it was unbelievable, it was very simple to understand. Most of the Evil Gods and Chaos daemons were born under similar circumstances. They would be born from the remains of Order beings that passed away. They were definitely monsters that were not recognized by the world.

As he lifted his head and set his sights ahead, he saw more runic patterns than he could imagine passing him by as he moved forward. It seems as if the interior of the Hills of Thunders were covered with magic runes. The magical glow of the mist even created some weak thunderbolts in the air. These thunderbolts were behaving just like nerves passing a large amount of information at the speed of light across the tunnels and caves within the Thunderous Mountain all the way to its central core. That central core would be the one core that possessed the control over the entire body of the mountain.

Magic, was the gathering of wisdom. So the question remained. What kind of the existence was this Chaos then? The technology that was found in this mountain was beyond the best technology the entire Mycroft Continent could offer at the moment.

Joshua seemed to be weighed down by anxiety as he sensed the density of the magic energy all around him. He was only a few seconds away from reaching the central core of the mountain. However, the warrior could not help but to feel more suspicious as his journey to the center of the core was too smooth. Not to mention that the power and the technology of the enemy was far more advanced than he could ever imagine. Joshua could not believe that enemy of such level would not have any sort of defence system to protect its central core.

As he took a turn at the corner right before him, the warrior hit a dead end. However, he could sense that his target, the central energy core of the Thunderous Mountain was just right behind that wall.

However, as expected by the warrior as he advanced, endless magic energy gathered into a mass of blinding light. The light mass appeared to be humanoid. Its body was inconsistently surging with furious electrical plasmas as violent sparks burst out of the surface of its glowing skin. The moment it took form, it suddenly charged straight at the warrior at a lightning speed. That lightning humanoid possessed the power of an Gold-advanced tier being. Not to mention that it did not have a physical body to begin with. Its speed was almost as fast as lightning. Just when Joshua noticed that being taking form, it had struck its fist right on the face of the warrior. Everything happened too quickly.

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