Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

The existence of the weak is unnecessary.

History of civilizations was the eternal process were the strong triumphs over the weak.

The weak were the titan lizards that went extinct during the prehistoric ice age, the wildlands behemoths hunted to the very last, domesticated livestock, harvested crops, as well as the foreign races who once fought the ancestors of the Court, the latter having ended up with everything from their skin, blood and bone devoured.

Only the strong lives in this world, and all that were defeated by their environments, or hunted, tamed and massacred through violence are all weak. The strong would then feats upon the scarlet of the weak, building stairways from their bones which lead them higher in the path of civilization. The strong should spurn all that is weak, including less than robust seeds, dullards, born cripples—the law of the Court forbids the existence of the weak, slaying them right after they were born and throwing them into abysses.

We, the Court, severs any vulnerability on our forms.

We alter our bodies so that poison that kills us could be converted into harmless chemical compounds.

We altered our mindset so that the god, faith and psionic attacks were reduced into laughing matters.

We trigger arcane fission missiles in the atmosphere and the soil so that violent radiation fills this world, so that the weak individuals that could not endure it were all eliminated.

We cultivated our forms and honed our spirits to learn all that could be learned. We are powerful, wise, calm and cruel, with our champion capable of destroying an entire world. It had emerged victorious over our skies and land, which is why it became our king and led us to conquer the worlds beyond—just as we had slain the behemoths and foreign races dozens of thousand years ago.

Then, we found even more weaklings.

Single-eyed aberrations bound by faith, a race that obsessively gathered knowledge from every reach, nomads that roamed around on the backs of Void Behemoths, inconsequential insects that devoured everything as if reincarnated from hungry ghosts, amok machines that must have developed programming errors… otherworld creatures fill every place in the great wondrous stage that is the Multiverse—the weak, born mistakes of evolution are ever-present, holing up in every corner of the galaxy, wasting resources and food.

The very lives of these shameful existences were a mistake. We who have claimed the duty of the powerful must correct them.

“The Imperator must be informed.”

Inside a planetary region controlled by the Takur Ruin Cult within a vast galaxy was a core territory of twelve sanctuaries. There, a creature lurks within a world ruin that resembled an asteroid, lowering its living signal as much as possible before floating along with the world fragment past various planetary regions.

An agent of Court Amos—reverently known as the Bloody Court by other civilizations, the Lurker was silently gathering information. Its powerful energy sensory organs granted it ability to feel beyond World Barriers, feeling all forms of grand-scale energy fluctuations… and that was why the Lurker sensed that its old foes were planning something huge. With its rich experience, it could feel the distant direction where the energy fluctuated: the other side of dimensions.

“They are exploring the quadrants of the Lost Galaxy… They must have found something of value—the Court must be informed.”

With that thought, the Lurker did not pause to rise out of its form’s hibernation. A tangled sphere of plant roots, each barb would acutely pick up on every energy ripple within that planetary region, which was also why it could leech into that world fragment and simultaneously detect the information of worlds around.

Naturally, that unique form was not the original state of the Court’s species.

The truth was that every member of Amos Court was distinctive mutated lifeforms. Exposed to severe radiation at birth, each individual would mutate positively, awakening the innate talents within that absorbs radiation as an energy source and viewed as successes. They would also experience their first modification by their parents, augmenting their lifeforce and radiation resistance, nullifying various natural organic defects. Soon, they would be able to feed on soil, metals and various inorganic substance, living temporarily with their physical forms in the Void.

This was the first and only time the Court had biologically modified another. In the learning and observation of the futures, the Court would follow their consciousness and alter themselves to the form they yearned for. Those that failed halfway were either dead of lab materials, for the Court would better go empty-handed than accepts any feeble failures.

That was the reason Court Amos could stand up against the Takur Ruin Cult despite having only one-tenths of their enemy’s population, even occasionally claiming advantage.

The body of each successful individual in the Court were their own blade and armor, even Void warships. Still, it did not mean that they did not use tools, and they could be often seen enchanting their blades and putting an extra layer of armor over their armored forms, for what they pursued was power and not simplistic evolution of their physical forms. Apart from biotechnology, the court was also advanced in machine constructs, having the ability to create artificial demiplanes or mountainous warships—their technology were not stolen either, but originates from the most profound of ideas that the Court members who chose to evolve into thinking machines came up with.

The Lurker was one of their kind who had evolved as a paragon of the ‘sensing and gathering information’ aspect. Now, it was also revealing another side about itself—as every barb on the Lurker’s body awakened from dormancy, the unusual creature lifted each barb to form a transmitter, and sent every information without pause towards the Court’s borders.

The massive data stream had neither form nor sign apart from the Lurker’s slight burst of energy. However, the Lurker knew that its death was seal as the one-eyed Takur zealots would locate the origins of the unusual energy signature and tear it to shreds. Neither sides in the war needed captives since they could learn any information that they knew by tearing it out of their souls.

Therefore, the Lurker briskly killed itself in the split second that it had finished its transmission. The countless barbs turned around and stabbed into the Lurker’s core and destroyed its very soul—such was the principle of the Court: the strong would decide even their own death and not place their fate in the hands of the weak.

Then, a dozen seconds later, the dimension rippled as twenty patrol zealots teleported nearby the world fragment as the Lurker had imagined. Their leader darted forward within, finding the lifeless remains of the Lurker.

“Another suicide… The Amos… It has sent its message home.”

The one-eyed leader growled upon the realization. “The Prophets must be informed that our monitoring of the Lost Galaxy had been compromised. The Court would never stand idly by as we move a step ahead, and would explore the Lost galaxy as well.”

***

Meanwhile, in the First Sanctuary of the world of Twelve Sanctuaries, after the Lurker had sent its message and the patrol team had found its corpse…

A plainly dressed elderly cyclops was meditating deep inside the shrine of the Takur Ruin Cult, with two priests dressed in elegant prophet robes in front of it doing the same.

In the world where psionic, spiritual and divine power tangled, they were communicating with pure consciousness.

“The Amos would never suspect a thing. They would always go about it the same way and imitate our exploration of the Lost Galaxy with the intent of surpassing us.”

The will of the elder was cold but steady, occupying the initiative in the spirit realm—the two Prophets were as frail as mere children before it.

“When the Amos explore the Lost Galaxy,” the elder then continued, “we would stop of our own. The Third Prophet is right: the Lost Galaxy is very dangerous. Even our probe just now almost triggered retaliation from a champion on the other side.”

The Prophets nodded slightly, agreeing in the spirit realm.

Both of them had been present in the ritual too.

The memory was still fresh: they still remembered the horrific presence that emanated from the other side of the dimensional rift—two presences, one faster than light, and heavier than a world had attempted to observe their world in reverse from beyond the distant dimension. If not for the plainly dressed elder severing the dimensional rift at once, the powerful beings on the other side would have learned of the Takurs’ existence.

“We had observed each of the strong-but-not-too-strong presences that were acting alone in the Lost Galaxy, and before their true champions realized a thing, we had gained much information.”

One of the Prophets—the Third Prophet who had made a prophecy about the Lost Galaxy a while ago spoke first with solemnness, “It’s astonishing. There are many powerful individuals of the same race, and yet they are found in every corner of the galaxy no matter how remote.”

“Grand Patriarch. We have reason to believe that the Lost Galaxy had already been occupied by an extraordinarily powerful Void civilization, their territory spanning the entire galaxy itself. There were various omens in my prophecy before that proved to be powerful foreign races that they defeated and sealed.

“Indeed.” The other Prophet, one of few words finally spoke quietly, “Let the Amos explore it. We only need to sit and watch.”

The elder that the Third Prophet addressed as Grand Patriarch nodded noncommittally. Its physical form had long since withered, while it was dressed in typical peasant fashion—regardless, anyone who had been trained in the supernatural spiritual powers would learn that the seemingly what horrific soul power that insignificant senior wielded.

Presently, countless Takur zealots were working at the shrine and holy city they sat in. The entire world, from its farmlands and cities, seas and forest as well as the First Sanctuary were made from the elder’s soul.

‘A Dream Come True’.

Reality, illusory, psionic, dream… the boundary of everything was mere smoke and mirrors before the Canopy.

And there were twelve such worlds.

The previous Grand Patriarchs of the Takur Ruin Cult had used their souls as the material to build the Twelve Canopies: realms that exist between dream and reality, it was the eternal home and shelter of the Takur Zealots, as well as the response and resistance towards the doomsday prophecy once made by the Holy One of the Void.

[Worlds of reality would only ever fall into nothingness, but only eternal dreams could live forever within the darkness.]

Such was the article of faith written which the Takur Ruin Cult holds as Truth. All nonbelievers were obstacles against that reality, and the Cult would not hesitate to kick them into the mud and crush them into insubstantial psionic dust.

“Never underestimate any race. Though they may not comprehend the ultimate truth of the Multiverse, we are merely a step ahead of them.”

In the spirit realm, the Grand Patriarch looked up. With its soul having long detached from the limits of the supernatural, it had surpassed even World Will.

Now, it spoke ever so quietly, “Our plan is to use the champions of the Lost Galaxy to weaken Court Amos. Even so, that plan could go wrong if Court Amos contacts them, for they may actually suppress their bloodlust and lust for destruction briefly as they try to turn those champions against us.”

“Prepare twofold: we would halt our observation of the Lost Galaxy champions, but do not give up on the exploration itself. Third Prophet, when you return, maintain your watch over those worlds.”

“We cannot face the future in ignorance.”

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