Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

The are times when words and languages fail to describe certain scenes.

His back to the divine light of the seven gods, Joshua, who was alone, lifted his eyes to look ahead. It was pitch-black as far as his eyes could see—it was the thickest of ink and the darkness that kills all light stretched ahead without end.

Like the lonesome warrior who stood before the vast seas, watching the deathly oceans.

The Nether River that gathered from every direction of the galaxy converged there. The raging flows of worlds ruined rumbled and submerged here, eventually becoming a part of the darkness. It was infinitely dangerous here millennia ago since millions of worlds were born here in every single second, before darting away to every corner of all dimensions. The unthinkable shift of mass and gravity would tear apart all weak beings, and even gods would have to stay vigilant in every moment to any mishap.

But now, it was silent.

However, even if it no longer swirled, the Vortex of Creation was even more horrific: quiet darkness was far more terrifying than rumbling flashes, for while the latter presents danger with form, the former represents the unknown.

Still, so what?

Joshua smiled fearlessly in the face of unknown and terror.

Indeed, it was the graveyard of countless worlds, the lowest point of the galaxy beneath nine hundred Abyssal realms.

Indeed, this was the Root and final stopping place of the Nether River, the place where all things in the galaxy was recycled.

This place was formerly the Vortex of Creation, the battlefield between Sage and the Evil God of Fertility, and presently the Bottom of the Abyss. The gods usually call it the Abyssal Paradise, but Joshua thought that the Darkest Abyss was fitting.

Not only would light dim here, even other supernatural powers would be suppressed by raging Steel Particles and Chaotic energies. In this dark domain, everything from mana, Steel Strength and divine power would be slowly grinded away, eroded and reduced to nothing.

That may be the most terrifying and dangerous of forbidden lands in the Multiverse.

It was a good time for a challenge.

As the Nether River thundered, the warrior did not hesitate and strode forward.

A neon light ring whirled. As his body glinted with the blessing of eight deities, the final divine words of the God of Might revolved around Joshua’s ears as the warrior calmly moved forward.

Thus, he at once ventured from one darkness to another more profound darkness.

There was no vision, no sound, no sense of direction and it was as if he was walking in cement, with his entire body being subject to terrible corruption.

After stepping out of the Nether River and taking his first step into the Bottom of the Abyss, Joshua felt as if he had entered a deep sea. Everything around was Chaos waters that had frozen into ice, and he could barely move one step forward even with his power.

“Quite sturdy.”

Joshua said to himself quietly, just as the divine power around him activated.

A divine flame in the extreme darkness.

Divine blessing, reacted at once upon touching the solidified Chaos energies, with eight-colors clashing violently against the darkness, promptly bursting in blinding light. Then, as if ice melted by flame, it was all vaporized into steam, while substantial colorless pure energies emanated, encircling Joshua.

The burning was just like the Initial Flame incinerating Chaos into primordial Steel.

Blinding powerful light quaked like fires in the darkness as divine powers and Chaos clashed, with distinct veins of divine bolts streaking past the steam, embodying a horrific and threatening presence.

And that was a chance for Joshua to rapidly advance: with divine power and Chaos colliding and reacting, he would not have to use his own Steel Strength to resist the concentrated Chaos in the Abyssal Paradise. He could even use the bursting clash between the two to recover vision and sense of direction to advance towards the depths.

But suddenly, realizing that he was alone, Joshua could not tell at once where was the core of the Rebirth seal and where he should be heading. It was then that a deep voice wafted from within his body.

“There—I could sense the depths of the Abyss.”

Goliath the Demon King and Liege of the Sixth Abyss said calmly. “I have no reason to lie, it is there.”

With those words, the Demon King’s soul fragment relayed another information to guide Joshua.

“…Right, you’re still here.”

Joshua blinked, having relied on it for directions in the Nether River before—even so, the warrior was not too surprised. Although as the Seven Gods’ memories kept recovering as they journeyed further beneath the Abyss, he and the Gods hence did not need Goliath the Abyssal to point directions. Still, it appears that its presence was certainly useful.

Without any doubt of the demon, Joshua advanced at the way Goliath pointed, a decisive move that instead left the soul fragment astonished.

“You actually trust me that much?!”

“Or what?” The warrior calmly retorted, leaving Goliath speechless.

***

Meanwhile, Pope Igor had just returned to the Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds beyond the world of Mycroft after keeping the peace in another Void civilization. He appeared to sense something, and left the demiplane with a face full of grief to the Void, staring at the boundlessly distant direction of the Abyss.

In the eyes of ‘the god who walks amongst humankind’, the once chaotic, erratic and dark Abyss had abruptly become clear. Before the Sixth Hundred and Sixty-Six Abyss, innumerable little flames burnt in the grey realms: those were the footprints of countless pioneers who were clearing the Chaos within, stopping unrest and exerting absolute violence to get all vicious demons and monsters to calm, and abstain from their blood lusting excitement.

Beyond the Sixth Hundred and Sixty-Six, gigantic rings of divine power were engulfing the core depths of the Abyss like a colossal vortex seal. There were four divine crests: a sky-blue Ouroboros, a pale emerald bird, a pale gold bifurcated eye, a violet heart, steadily whirling in the Abyss, their might overruling countless worlds and appearing able to continue over millennia.

Further down the Abyss were three veins of differently colored divine light: pure white, steel-gray and black. The lights, however, appear to be stirring and unstable, for the exceeding darkness was clearly eating away at the three seals, dimming the radiance. None would know how long those divine radiances would last: years, months, days or perhaps hours.

Finally, at the depths of the Abyss was pure darkness that could not be illuminated even with divine light. It resembled an ocean of ink, and light, no matter how bright would at most permeate the outer layers, keeping the inside an eternally condensed darkness.

Nevertheless, the elderly pontiff saw one faint light within, advancing without stopping.

While it was slow and occasionally paused to adjust its direction, it was definitely advancing and unyielding.

But just as old Igor watched the light advance and rejoiced with expectations…

Suddenly…

It stopped.

***

Joshua was forced to stop moving in the Darkest Abyss.

The blast of Chaos matter carried from the Nether River should have made the Darkest Abyss a quaking region. Though it would not be surging ragingly like the former Vortex of Creation, it should not be as quiet as it was now. Nonetheless, the Seven Gods’ seal and Zinsen’s severing of the Nether River had kept away those things that should be affecting his perception terribly for the time being, reducing the Bottom of the Abyss that should have besieged him into a still, dead place.

That was also precisely why Joshua needed to stop.

“What is it, human?”

The Demon King’s soul fragment asked instinctively, noticing something unusual. The warrior, however, did not answer—he simply lifted his right front arm which blazed in Steel Strength and divine light, shining over the surrounding darkness.

He did that for over half an hour, and that was when the puzzled Goliath finally understood why Joshua, who had been making every second count suddenly paused.

In front of them were a dozen dark spheres had hovered silently and still in the Chaotic darkness.

The spheres were rather familiar, and around them, space was being warped to an extreme degree, appearing sunken like a deep well. Boundless Chaos power cascaded around the well, and was then drawn within.

It was the face of the ‘Final Celestial Form’.

The thirteen black holes were crowded in the planetary space that was less than three light hours wide, with their sizes varying from large to minuscule. Even so, the gravity and Chaos energies between the black holes formed an exquisite balance that kept them pausing almost silently where they were—it was certainly an anomaly that made them unlike normal black holes.

In fact, they were the composite of substantial world fragments, Steel Particles, and Chaotic power given form. The celestial forms would simply float at the depths of the Darkest Abyss just like a trap, awaiting any reckless interloper to enter.

“Troublesome. They have sealed almost path ahead and was very well hidden—I would have darted inside with my speed before.”

Joshua breathed a sigh after a long, careful observation. If not for his study of gravity, his own true form being a supermassive body and divine powers that aided in clearing Chaotic energies’ disturbances, he would probably have fallen into the multiple Chaos black hole trap, eternally lost.

Still, that was not the most surprising aspect—Joshua could clearly sense masses of bizarre gravitational turmoil around those black holes. It meant that other directions were beset with supermassive black hole traps as well! In fact, the core of the seal at the Darkest Abyss was tightly covered and encircled by lines of black hole traps!

The Demon King’s soul fragment appeared shaken and left speechless by the unbelievable sight. Joshua, however, was considering how he would bypass the trap, and began to search their origins by linking himself to the information embedded in surrounding Steel Strength.

“…They are the ashes of worlds and stars after their destruction… in the battle between Sage and the Evil God of Fertility, the energies that birthed new stars within the Vortex of Creation were used as weapons, with the raw materials of countless worlds condensed into colossal but unstable stars—both of them thus molded them as supernova bombs that they flung at each other.

“The Great Wound—it is an unhealable injury for the galaxy, torn open by the greatest of Extraordinary individuals!”

Joshua studied the memories of stars. Since the Vortex of Creation had stopped whirling before long, the Steel Strength that was wafting at the depths of the Abyss and the information they contained never diminished, allowing the warrior to easily understand the origins of those black hole traps.

For Extraordinary individuals who had overcome even supernova explosion and could remain unscathed by gamma ray burst. Perhaps only the Final Celestial Form—black holes that did not permit even light to escape pose a lethal threat for them. One way or another, the battle between Sage and Evil God had birthed countless stars, burning them to their peak state as weapons before they were reduced to ashes. The remains that gathered thus became the darkness that drained all light.

“Using the remains of his own battle, the Sage used the black holes to stall the Vortex of Creation, and established Project Rebirth—using black holes as an anchor point that absorbs Chaos energies, he would at once prevent the awakening of the unknown Evil God while wearing down the Chaos.”

Joshua stared with a complex gaze at the black celestial forms before him. There was no doubt that it was a grand plan, and if Project Rebirth was accomplished, the world-birthing energy gathered in the entire Vortex of Creation over thousands of years would be forcefully integrated into one body. With that, a realm infinitely massive such as Stellaris would be created: it would be a world with multiple galaxies and yet was a single, extremely colossal continental world!

In that world, black holes with billion times the mass of ordinary planetary systems would drag the world along as they whirled, their infinitely massive accretion disk solely emanating eternal light, illuminating the entire realm.

That world would not have night. Its excessive mass would cause scattered nebulas to independently form stars over the ‘continent’, hanging in the skies or directly embed themselves in the continent or the peak of mountains. Like myths of the sacred flame on top of Mount Olympus, it would gift its light to all intelligent races living around it.

Perhaps, in the edges of that world were regions where matter thinned. There, one would not see the light of the accretion disks, nor would the stars form by themselves. It would hence be relatively dark, but that was a unique sight such as the poles, and frivolous.

Perhaps, the supermassive continent itself would be partitioned to a dozen layers due to its excessive mass. Each of them resembled galactic rings and possess independent constitution, environments, and many stars. Any race and any life would find their own place in that heavenly realm that exceeds imagination, that even those with most demanding living conditions would find an optimal living place in the continent that was a dozen times the mass of a galaxy.

Moreover, the extreme concentration of supernatural energies would be enough for the training of near unlimited numbers of Extraordinary individuals. The energy mass of those galactic cycles being insurance, it was impossible for that fertile realm to lack resources and wage war over it.

Perhaps, the day would come that the endless worlds over all galaxies would gradually merge with that world into one, reborn as a singular realm that escapes imagination.

Insanity does not even begin to describe that plan.

If a person who takes half a step ahead of civilization was magnificent, and a lunatic if they took two, then what if they took a hundred steps?

Even the gods had barely understood it as a ‘Rebirth of the Glorious Era’, worshipping the false image that barely scratched the surface of that plan.

Joshua could only breathe out gently as he discerned the secrets hidden behind the black hole clusters that resembled traps, unable to actually sigh.

It was now that he finally understood what was the great mystery that the Starherders said, the one that they believed the ‘Forerunner civilization’ had left behind.

If it was the Sage who left them that information, he must have believed that his plan would work and that his objective was clear—he would have other races leave their dangerous galaxies and enter that world which grants definite safety, distancing themselves from Chaos and Evil Gods.

If Project Rebirth went according to plan, when the Great Khan had led the Starherders to the Darkest Abyss would find not black hole traps that Joshua now saw, but a gentle, majestic realm that accepts every being of Order.

The sheer sturdiness of that singular world’s World Barrier could never be affected by any Evil God. Joshua even suspected that the World Barrier of that level would be no different from black hole event horizons, and inescapable once entered—like how those tales unfolded where almost all who ascended as gods and sages could never return to their homes, there is no turning back once they entered that world.

But Project Rebirth failed.

The stirring, exciting scenes of the future were nothing but conjectures of blueprints.

What lay before Joshua was still darkness: Chaotic, pitch-black, cold and eroding everything like powerful acid, and the final form of stars that were darker than black.

The Demon King’s soul fragment was unaware of Joshua’s pondering and guessing, and simply stared at the shadows of the lowest Abyss—the darkness left by the black holes in the dimensions were the most profound shade in the Multiverse, which was indescribably valuable to Goliath, one that ultimately belonged to the shadows. It could even develop gravitational techniques affiliated Shadow from within, as well as similar dark defensive barriers that absorb energies.

Even so, just when it was about to further study the black holes, the Demon King heard the sound of tears.

Those were voices of grief and despair, and yet was neither sinister nor heartbreaking. Even so, it reaches the depths of the spirit, dying all with sadness and meaninglessness.

The cries echoed around Goliath’s ears, faintly hearing the mournful voices of babies dying as soon as they were born, hence unable to focus on its observation.

It heard the vague weeping of adolescents whose worlds died right after they obtained their dreams.

It heard the voices of fatigued adults who shouldered families, nurturing the next generation and diligently working in the great machine that was society. It heard the tragedies that struck, leaving decades of hard work to waste, leaving parents holding their children as they watched the great stars fall from the skies, destroying the lament of all life.

It heard a great many things, even the voices of other demons that grew in anguish as they tried to survive amidst the Abysses. But it was without purpose, all they did was venting through slaughter, proving their existence with destruction and bellowing in rage and loss.

“They are crying…”

The Demon King’s soul fragment said blankly in the warrior’s palm, looking around but finding nothing. “Who is it? Who could force those illusions into my eyes and ears?!”

“Those are memories embedded in the Chaos.”

Joshua lowered his gaze at the Demon King’s soul fragment in his hand and said calmly, “Evil Gods are actual destruction, combined from endless souls, vengeful wills combined with boundless residual information of civilizations and Chaotic force. Every single part of it are condensed memories of homeworlds and their destruction.”

“The Chaotic erosion of the Void of Creation caused the assembling of infinite vengeful wills after innumerable worlds were destroyed, shaping the unknown Evil God. The Nether River are its tentacles, the Abyss is its body, and the Chaos surrounding you and I is its form that had yet to awaken. The voices you here, the vengefulness you sense are powers that Evil God would have in the future… after all, we are inside its body.”

“They have all been destroyed…” The Demon King muttered, having itself destroyed several worlds to plunder souls and resources before quickly turning silent. Though its main body could have resisted the voices that reaches to the depths of one’s soul and block the Steel Strength as well as Chaos memories, its soul fragment could not—it was heavily affect and left confused.

Joshua simply shook it so that it regained clarity.

“The tears of those destroyed had always been a tragedy, with no exceptions over millions of years.”

Turning away from the soul fragment, Joshua looked up at the darkness ahead. His pondering allowed him to find a path of gravity rift that could be crossed, and hence strode towards it while saying calmly, “The wars between Extraordinary civilization and Extraordinary individuals could instantly ruin countless ordinary worlds and civilizations, and those places would have millions, even billions of sentient beings.”

“Amongst them are the pregnant, children, men, women, young, old who holds different emotions. All of them would have stories and destines to their own, but in the backdrop that is the excessively vast Multiverse and the wars between champions and superior civilizations, they are all teardrops in the rain.”

Was their fate of demise a destiny or sheer bad luck? None could tell.

That is why it was a tragedy.

“Do you feel moved and saddened for those civilizations, Goliath?”

***

However, before the Demon King could answer, Joshua laughed and shook his head just as he crossed a gravity equilibrium point formed from multiple black holes.

“Don’t be.”

“The lingering echoes of destruction and memories of civilization is over billions, or even more than trillions. Either way, I can’t count.”

“And don’t forget, your residence the Abyss is the grave of endless ruined worlds over the entire galaxy.”

“Wait!”

Goliath could not help but exclaim as it watched Joshua came close but still managed to evade one gravity trap after another, moving through the concentrated Chaotic space at the speed of around two light hours. “How are you so sure? Could you have been hearing those voices too?”

In the brief few seconds he heard those echoes, the Demon King felt that it was not itself and was about to melt into the Chaos and assimilated. However, Joshua managed to explain clearly the origins of those voices and their essence… How lucidly had he heard them that he could understand those broken pieces of mutterings? How powerful was his will that he was not assimilated by the voices?

Goliath had even wanted to sigh in awe, but what Joshua revealed next left it speechless.

“I’ve been listening to them all along.”

Moving with a thrilling psionic warp to evade the whirling crash of a world fragment, Joshua adjusted his advance while speaking calmly, “In fact, since I entered the Abyss, I could hear countless worlds crying and screaming at me, begging for my hope or for me to destroy them.”

And couldn’t you just block them?!

The warrior, the noticing the Demon King’s surprised gaze, smiled. “I’m not crazy.”

“But I would never block them either.”

The outermost part of the eight layered divine power radiance that encircled Joshua’s body—the blessing by the God of Order and Destruction was showing signs of failing. It made evident that Joshua had ventured deep into the heart of the Darkest Abyss, leaving even divine power overwhelmed, even consumed by Chaos.

Joshua drew out the pale-blue sandglass given to him by Merlin, the God of Order and Destruction and said quietly, “You don’t understand. I am the King of Searing Soul.”

“Hearing the sounds as worlds end, and setting the Chaos aflame—remolding worlds, maintaining Order…”

As he spoke, he crushed the sandglass he held, causing pale-blue grains of divine power to splash out and be set ablaze over his body. Serpentine divine patterns were faintly appearing over his steel armor condensed out of neutron degenerate matter, overlapping with the dragon scale patterns gifted by the Dragon God, forming a packed but sturdier microscopic divine construct.

Then, the warrior’s voice rang once more.

“Listening to the cries of the tormented and pacify their sadness—such is my duty.”

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