Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

Joshua looked up quietly from his illusory dream at the darkness around him. All that encircled him was the boundless Void of Chaos and a deathly silence—this time, however, darkness was not mere darkness, but a combination of bitterness, despair, and struggle.

And within that darkness, Joshua could hear the sobs of children in empty houses after losing their parents to war, as well as elderly who lost children to natural disasters and stared speechlessly at tombstones.

There were even the tears of desperate youths who were bullied by sinister policies as they chose death, the only path open to them, and their hopeless society that fell into dystopia.

There were the silent sobs of a middle-aged man who was suffocated by the factory owners in the early days of modern industry, and had to shoulder the living of his family of five. He was not worried over his craggy, ragged body, but how his family would survive when he dies.

Conflict was not war, and neither was end profound destruction. They could be concealed within the tiniest of details, within policies and inside the despair that lurks in the hearts of many, never revealed before the critical moment.

An individual could never understand another, just as the joy and sadness of life were not synchronized. All humans would shed tears, but those are merely nonsensical noise to others, and abysses sexist between people.

Joshua saw it all, hearing and even touching as he felt everything.

He could feel the grief caused by natural calamity—those whose kin died earlier than they did, just as there were those who died trying to survive.

He could feel the loss in war—comrades dying senselessly due to foolish conflict amongst commanding officers, even their own impending deaths due to foolish orders or abandonment by superiors.

The excessive progress of industry, worlds catastrophically polluted and newborns that die early on, unable to even have a glance of the world—not to mention those that were on their dying breath while still carried by their mothers, even mothers who perished with their unborn. There were even infants born without a brain, never once living nor knowing if it was fine.

There were worlds which climates shifted merely because the sun inched away or closer, causing droughts or blizzards. Children of farming villages were snatched away, found again as bones which were stripped clean. There were mothers who fed children with blood or men cutting off their own flesh to sustain their wives amidst famished migrating tribes, while those even more despair would trade children as food, tearing up in hopelessness and guilt as they consumed the last piece of meat, unable to do so even as they struggled to survive.

Things only became uglier and more hopeless.

Dark shadows stretched on without limit, and the silver planet was almost utterly enshrouded amidst the Darkest Abyss.

There were countless worlds and civilizations destroyed.

But who should be accused and held responsible? The two forces engaged in blood wars, the abuse of weapons or war itself? Should they hate natural disasters itself, climate change and the naturally revolving orders?

Should they point and curse at the skies, or vent by stomping the grounds? Should they scold the flaws of social policies, or accuse the baseness of civilization and life?

All of that appeared hollow, and immensely so.

Endless Chaos flowed rapidly, encircling the silver star as if intent on escaping something. As time passed and it fought with its full power, it finally freed itself from its shackles and made a noise in rage—it was a raging howl from the Evil God yet birthed, a tearful wail as if a beast meeting its end, anguish and despair that tangled with sorrow.

Endless memories surged as it roared, doubting the purpose of its existence. Endless tears cascaded, it was at a loss, questioning if only misery was all that could be found in life.

Joshua seemed to see the whirling of the ages from the voice: infinite memories and history presented itself as a limitlessly lengthy passageway that reaches out without end. Upon it were the sprouts of innumerable life and races that perished, and the fall of countless worlds and civilizations.

In prehistoric ages, worlds where organic molecules and macromolecular polymers never combined into unicellular lifeforms, and life hence could not be birthed.

There were worlds with stable climate, allowing algae lifeforms to occupy the world. They would survive over a billion years without change or evolution, before falling stars destroyed them all.

The precursors to intelligent races were slain by never-before encountered creatures just as they were ready take a step out of their homeland, those dangerous beasts hence stopping them from flourishing over other reaches of the world, ruining the chance to develop and for boundless futures.

In stone ages, sentient beings that could only use primitive tools would be unable to resist any catastrophic shift, with a simple tribal war and migration potentially causing the extinction of several tribes.

During feudal eras, a single epidemic could wipe out a world’s population. There would be survivors if things turned out fortunate, while civilization would naturally be destroyed if the population falls below a sustainable threshold.

The policy in each era holds the possibility to one civilization’s fall and a race’s extinction, with an invisible filter passing over any unfortunate civilization and world. Though nature would be less of a factor as civilizations develop, it was more likely for the civilization to destroy itself as well.

Be it the age of steam, industry or electronics, war could make or break a county, just as the mutual butchering of different societies was far more harmful to natural shifts. Compared to vicious beasts, intelligent beings that wield steel creation enjoyed killing their own kind.

War would become all the more terrible as the solar age wherein they unraveled the secrets of the stars: nuclear nations would easily stir wars that decimate ecosystems, which was truer for spacefaring age—civilizations were more dangerous the more technology progresses.

And such threats were not exclusive to technological races. For civilizations wielding supernatural powers, their path was even more difficult, having obtained the power to destroy themselves since the feudal eras.

Joshua could hear more wails as worlds died.

Spectral abominations would abruptly leap out of human hearts during Mana Tides, just as society would collapse as naturally born magical creatures would assault civilization. The evils hidden at the bowels of humanity and civilization would hence awaken with Extraordinary abilities, hence consuming mankind itself—Simboa was not a singular example, for the flames of war always inevitably claims any civilization where supernatural powers abruptly surface, hence throwing the world in dangerous Extraordinary warfare.

Even if conflict was suppressed, demonstrations, riots, rebellions, and revolutions would occur one after another. Those who gained abilities alongside their kin and friends; those who gained abilities but their kin and friends did not; those whose kin and friends did not gain abilities either… such simple links could segment a once orderly constitution, and a single lacking aspect for social policy would lead to the failing of civilization.

Radical civilizations would reap the bitter fruit of radicalism. Existence had never seen any single perpetually stable civilization: those were rocks, not superior beings.

Self-destruction.

Self-destruction.

Self-destruction.

As Joshua moved forward on the endless path, carrying infinite memories, amidst the cries concealed by boundless misery and immeasurable doubts, the song of the unknown Evil God played: the voice chants of destruction, invoking death.

The warrior gained an epiphany.

The Evil God of sorrows was calling for the fall of civilizations, its existence and power was not to stir conflict and strife out of thin air, but luring civilization towards a natural fall.

Born in the Abyssal Paradise and the former Vortex of Creation, it was the culprit that made all civilization vanquish themselves, the natural enemy of all worlds and life!

As anguish piled amidst the Abyss while despair finally ferments the bitter consequences of demise, the Evil God of Death grows in the wails of misery.

“Dark… it’s so damned dark!”

“I beg all of you, stop! I just want to see the next dawn… Could any of you not want to spare this world that little time?!”

“This plan could cause massive seismic shifts. It is an invasive measure that I don’t agree with… but do we have the time? Not to mention that my term is at an end…”

“Do we still have a future?”

***

At present, Joshua sensed himself wrapped in boundless Chaos. However, the memories of countless perished that sank within the Abyss without reincarnation, as well as world fragments which marks were not purge was the bulk of it all, and he could hear infinite whispers in his ears seemingly intent on assimilating him and turning him into part of itself.

In the heart of the Darkest Abyss, the silver star had been completely covered in darkness, with the most basic form of the Evil God growing around it. It was futile even if Joshua activated the power of the King of Searing Soul—as long as vengeful wills within the erratic world fragments were not purged and misery itself was not cleansed, he would never split the condensing Chaos into innumerable ‘1’, and naturally unable to purify anything.

Still, that condensing Chaos did not kill the warrior at once.

Time passed in extended darkness.

All past memories were vanishing, and even dreams no longer existed in the Abyss.

In the nights without dawn, even names were forgotten.

Numberless shards of perished worlds and mournful sobs.

What actually was death?

For Extraordinary beings, physical deaths were simply a shift of form. For greater souls, death of the flesh was the beginning of new life.

It was the same for civilization.

Even as their ‘bodies’ die, their names would be remembered by other worlds and civilizations, with the recording of their name itself remaining to the end of the universe. Even when they had been long since ruined, they were in reality eternal.

Genuine death was existential perishing. It was everything that fell without a name and disappeared silently and unremembered even as everything ended.

In the Abyssal Paradise, what existed were the manifold civilization that had ‘died’. They had forgotten even their own name, repeating their tales not known to anyone in the Darkest Abyss, within its fathomless Chaos and starless nights.

The Evil God of Death hence grew in the sorrow that even time had forgotten, gaining form from the Chaos of despair.

Joshua was the single person who listened to them, the one person they could complain to. There was no longer any person in the Multiverse who could remember their name, and none would know their experiences.

They could only call upon that single person.

Therefore.

Unlimited anguish hence consumed Joshua…

Nevertheless.

In the dullness, silver radiance penetrated the condensed Chaos.

A bright light shone in the unilluminated Abyss.

The massive Star of Steel thus quaked once again—dark red runes began to spread over its surface while Chaos was vaporized. It was as if an engine which core was reactivated, shaking off the dust piling over it, like a heating furnace that melted the ice piling over it.

Inside the world, the space which had been occupied by extensive Chaotic mist was rapidly clearing, for at its center, an extremely dense star was shining once again. The silhouette of a four-handed Giant God appeared at the heart at the star, his arms waving as if to clean the world.

Joshua van Radcliffe was definitely consumed by sorrows… but the warrior did not descend into misery.

“I understand now. I have thought about death then, which was why you would appear and choose me as a condensation point… it was my error.”

It was I who have awakened you when you should have scattered, I who have made you remembered the sorrow of death…

Waking up from the muddled illusion, Joshua opened his eyes. What flowed in his eyes was no longer silver Steel Strength but pure crimson radiance—a will to fight that surpassed even divinity stirred in his heart, and he clenched his fists.

“I’ve actually given up on fighting… Though it was an instant, I thought about self-destructing and bringing you along with me and choose an easy death, giving up on the laborious chance to struggle for victory!”

“For a warrior, that is the greatest despair and anguish!”

In the Darkest Abyss, the Chaos that was briefly repelled was still intent on advancing, intending to spread itself to drown the light once more.

Even so, the giant Star of Steel began to transform with a violent rumble. With the powerful shine as if a supernova, the Giant God that was a world awakened and gained form—as the matter of a world shifted, a great mass point began to gather behind a Giant God. Dark chaos was dragged within, thereby molded into a Φ-shaped sphere and accretion disk. Inexhaustive light hence emanated from the two poles, forming a lance that permeates the darkness.

“I’ve fought dragons, hordes, Calamity, Chaos and Evil Gods. I had been in dire straits where I almost died, and encountered powerful foes that I logically could never defeat.”

But just as how any dire stairs could be overcome, conquering anything impossible with life—even the melancholy of self-destruction and the Evil God of Death are no exception!

Crimson sparks danced on silver armor. Flickering ashes wandered around the Giant God, and as light and dark interchanged, they were all blown towards the distant darkness by searing winds, starry and uncountable, tinder that could ignite flames, eternally undying.

“Doing battle against the vile nature of civilization and life, the fate of sadness, despair, and death?”

Watching shadows of despair that could drown countless worlds surged towards him again, Joshua raised his hand, condensing mass and forming a lance with which he pointed at the approaching darkness and Chaos.

The warrior’s lips curled into a smile.

“I like it.”

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