Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

The main body of the Black Fog—the final creation of the Shelter civilization, a powerful intelligent entity that was the condensation of dozens of races and all of their wisdom.

According to the plans set in motion by their leaders, each citizen of Shelter society would be implanted with a single unit of Black Fog. The accompaniment of that nanosized magical creation would keep infants immune from all sickness and calamity. Regardless what natural disease or genetic defect, the Black Fog would correct it all.

The existence of the Black Fog would greatly elevate all thought processes of its associate. It was almost the same a microchip hosted in their soul, a system that guided their strengthening and could automatically analyze the physical conditions of the associate, studying things that they did not know and determining the best outcome for the associate.

According to the projection of the Shelter civilization’s think tank, even infants thrown into a completely unfamiliar living world would not die as long as they shared the company of the Black Fog. Instead, they would grow rapidly until they were self-sufficient, or perhaps up to the next level.

It could be said that the union of Black Fog and intelligent races would create [Artificial Deities], a plan that did not dull in comparison to the [Multiverse Project] designed by the Sage and the gods. Through it, Shelter had refined itself to a profound Multiversal civilization, stirring a broad tide amidst the grand era.

Perhaps that was exactly why, the Black Fog was simply too powerful that the Shelter civilization themselves could not guarantee that it would lose control and turn. Therefore, they had set in the strictest of commands in the origin runic programming so that apart from the ‘Firstborn Black Fog’, other Black Fogs it spawned did not have the ability to replicate itself infinitely. As for the Initial Black Fog, or what was now the main body of the Black Fog, could not spread itself without limit either. In truth, due to technological factors, the main body of the Black Fog could not self-replicate infinitely as well since its core hub could not take the strain of such colossal processing.

And yet, all gamble and prudence were destroyed in the Evil God wave that destroyed all things. On that day, the entire Multiverse fell to indescribable darkness. Countless civilizations were destroyed, countless worlds shattered, with neither Shelter nor Mycroft spared, the chance to peak hence denied.

The civilization Mycroft would have a Flame Seed remaining, changing itself to present-day Starfall Era. On the other hand, Shelter only had a few surviving Black Fog, while all intelligent life died in the silence.

The moment of the Evil Gods’ arrival was simply too witty. The Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds that opened the Door to Finality never understood how it was instantly connected to the entire Abyss, and with the old gods and sages dying, none knew the truth of what happened then. The champions of today were hence unable to learn whether there was something that deliberately caused that in the shadows, ending all possibility for civilization to progress towards grandeur.

Whatever the case may be, the successors of the two civilization that had been allied now saw each other as threats, and began a war to the death. One fought for the plans of their creators of old, the other so that worlds would not be threatened by the darkness, for new hopes and future of civilization.

***

The power Black Fog embodied was a profoundness individual being could not hope to compare. It was at once aware of the situation when it sensed that multiple champions had warped through space to arrive on its hidden lair, thereby unlocking the final restraints enforced upon it and began to exhaust all efforts in the final battle.

[Unlocking seal on mana pool. Activating ether accelerator, commencing wide-area energy circulation interference, overriding dimensional shift control.]

Boundless darkness unfurled, devouring all radiance. The main body had extraordinarily massive in the first place, and was very much one black planet extended numberless tentacles, rising like a corona and almost drowning the warp point of the Legendary champions. It was also in that very moment that the Fog which had been dim and dull instantly shone, emanating a blinding incandescent white light.

Over a thousand years, countless Black Fog spawn had moved energies from the Void Vortex ceaselessly, transferring it to the main body. Most of it had been used to create more Black Fog, but some were preserved by the main body in case of emergencies—like now, as it faced the assault of more than ten superior beings.

The Legendary champions that warped here were hence met with the main body’s full-powered offensive the instant they arrived on the other side of the dimensions. In a split second, a searing heat incinerated all that there was in the world by fifteen hundred million degrees, as the dimensions kept deviating and distorting beneath a great strength, turned into mazes that imprisoned all those champions in that inescapable infernal hell.

Now, the main body of the Black Fog was an aberration with no fixed form, squirming in the Void, a warped, massive entity in contrast to its original state which was a spherical body with absolute smoothness, wrapped around a world. It extended thirteen viscous luminous tentacles, grasping at the thirteen Legendary champions including Joshua. A colossal face appeared where the tentacles crowded round, but that face abruptly caved into a huge hole, inside of which was bottomless, unfathomable darkness.

And a world was hidden in that darkness.

[The individual is weak, fragile. Only by becoming us and joining our might as one could the impending Finality be countered.]

In the sharp spiritual rumble dragged in the distorted dimensions, the surface of the Black Fog’s main body rolled by layers. Innumerable geometrical shapes formed or transformed, turning into gears, conduits and translucent steel constructs, working in a very complex formula. That formula was completely different from the machines that humans were familiar with, ignoring even the mental logic of intelligent beings on the surface. Still, in truth, it was the Black Fog’s distortion of spatiality that made it appeared that they were in separate places, when within each of their bodies were a singular form.

At the moment, the Black Fog appeared to be a living, evil, grotesque and aberrative giant machine god. Its thirteen tentacles were shrinking ceaselessly as if intending to kill all thirteen Legends at once, but it could never achieve that end: the tips of the thirteen tentacles were glinting in lights of different colors and brightness.

When Joshua stepped out of the dimensional maze and escaped the fifteen hundred million degrees incineration, various scenes greeted him:

The elderly pontiff stepped out in a relaxed manner from endless light; the flame hotter than a star’s core had merely cleared the dust on his clothes. Behind him were incalculable light bubbles of seven colors. They expanded, shrank, fused, split, pranced and rolled as if alive. Under its shine, one of the main body’s tentacles was disintegrating from an attack out of nowhere, crumbling like a shattered iceberg.

Wiping away cold sweat from his brow, Nostradamus was leaving the dimensional rift. He had never been caught by the Black Fog’s dimensional maze, and had instead directly found a rift and walked away from the broiling space. Still, he did no damage to the main body, just as the opponent did not hurt him.

After that was the Murloc Hight Priest. However, Godard resembled no murloc at all—its body was completely transparent, immune to all light and heat. Having completely mastered the ability to evolve and devolve, Godard had changed itself into a unique lifeform which could not be hurt by extreme heat, which instead only supplied it energy.

The others were escaping as well: the Sword Saint broke the maze with a single swing of his blade—part of his hair burnt but he appeared leisurely otherwise. Barnil had cast runes to convert himself into a plasma being, walking out just as William, who had turned himself into a pure spiritual body that ignored all energy entity shift did.

Stanley and the Nature’s Magister were right behind them—the Psionic Monarch had activated a teleportation shield, the pure heat and dimensional shift hence unable to affect him in Psionic Space.

The Nature’s Magister, on the other hand, was relatively ragged. She had materialized multifarious nanometer insulation, dashing out forcefully from the maze with her stores of energy. The Legendary behemoth that was with her had also used a rather plain method to block that blow as well: by creating a normal isolated space, it cooled the billion degrees heat to a hundred thousand, a temperature which was not too hot for it.

The others remaining, the Golden Dragon King, Barbarossa, and Fedorov. They appeared nonchalant and unscathed, albeit just a little slow in escaping—magic granted them the confidence to face any situation, and they had been in rush to leave such extreme environments given the information that were worth collecting. For its part, the Golden Dragon King appeared rather plump, after having absorbed considerable stores of energy.

Each Legendary champion had their own methods to face those extreme circumstances. To typical civilizations, the Black Fog’s offensive was absolute death, and a flotilla of thousands of Void warships would have been swept away by a single tentacle.

Even so, against those profound individual beings, it was slightly helpless.

It was very simple as to how Joshua escaped the burning dimensional stockade too: His neutron star external shell was usually ten million degrees, which had already elevated up to three hundred million when the world engine in Joshua’s inner core activated. The Black Fog’s ultimate move was hence mere air conditioning for it, unharmful and providing him power instead.

As for why the Black Fog did not keep its ‘Black Body’ form to absorb the Legends’ power, Joshua thought that it was because the Black Body itself had limits. Since his sub-lightspeed attacks could actually give the even main body pause, the full-power of the thirteen Legends just might deflect, even breaking apart the Black Body directly. Only knowing that too well, the main body certainly would not simply waste the limited numbers of the Black Fog, instead reserving them at the pivotal moment.

Now, the thirteen Legends were not scattered. Keeping watch of each other from afar and building a formation to crossfire, they stood off against the main body of the Black Fog that kept swirling incessantly. Both sides were welling with shockwaves of clashing energies surging towards the edge of those parts of the dimensions. The Void that was now barely serene and seemingly without a horizon appeared to be a cluster of radiant circuits that spread endlessly, popping a layer of white fog.

“Where on earth did the lot of you find such ancient evil?”

Fedorov, Elder of the Council of Seven, had entered a combat state. Lightning magic was flowing brightly in his hand, forming a spiraling plasma scepter in his hand. “I’ve wandered the Void and the Abyss for decades,” he said in disbelief, staring at the Black Fog, “but never once came across it or its spawn. How did the lot of you find it?”

“Its energy reserves are above the limits of my observation, and it might be dozens of times the total of magical energy found in the world of Mycroft. As for how we found it…”

Barnil’s fake left eye had projected a ‘target power levels excessively high, observation impossible’ notification, right before a green smoke billowed out of it and self-destructed from the overloading. Still, the mage glanced sideways at Joshua, saying silently, “Some people are simply born special. You can’t ever learn that, Fedorov.”

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