Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

The Legendary champions sailed away with almost every warship from the Zeta Ram system, leaving a few corvettes patrolling over the Eldar laborers establishing the Dimensional Hub array. The elementals Barnil created were watching as well, as they supervised the workers and base runes.

Nonetheless, most Eldars noticed the Combined Fleet’s departure and the shockwaves of the champions’ battle beyond the world. Even so, there was no hint of disorder on the Zeta Ram planet despite having gathered that other civilizations were in midst of attacking, getting back to work after a few awed utterances.

It was not the Mycroftians’ management style and cordial treatment stopping them from resistance—rather, it had been partly due to Barnil’s presence.

The single Legend had remained to calibrate the superstructure named ‘Station Origin’.

The Zeta Ram planet was slowly entering nighttime. The sun was setting while manmade lights began to flicker one after another across the continent—darkness loomed as the light passed, even as a myriad of colored magical illumination brightened the primitive land, bringing morning to the civilization.

Specialized Mycroftian engineers drove and worked under large suits of enchanted armor that made them resemble giants. Elementals also labored alongside psionic workers, slowly heading for the bustling base that stretched on further outwardly—beyond its reach, lakes were filled, mountains were split, hills flattened, and rivers cut off from their very source.

In the presence of the Intergalactic Dimensional Hub occupying half a continent’s surface, the grand sights and landscapes of nature were mere obstacles to progress. Summits, rivers, lakes, and valleys that were millions—even billions of years old were moved by the power of civilization into a flat base.

The old, white-haired, neatly dressed mage stood at the top of the Station Origin, smiling in pleasure as he looked out over the land and lights extendinging across all directions. But as Barnil looked up towards the Void overhead, his expression turned grave.

He observed Joshua battling against the Grand Patriarch, their blows illuminating the entire planetary system. He could also sense multiple abnormal teleportations, as well as the warp signature where Joshua headed for the distance—as a Legendary champion, Barnil could clearly sense the level of their battle, a class that he could now reach.

In one way or another, a champion was necessary to keep a civilization together in an Extraordinary world.

Typical Legendary champions could maintain a nation, with superior ones capable of unifying an entire continent. An even greater power was however required to unify a world and lead its civilization into the Void, and Barnil believed that he had not reached that level. He could at most unite a world in the absence of other Legends, and he could never lead all its people towards the Void, towards a future.

Now, it appeared that only Joshua had the depth to lead everyone, to look to the other side of the sky and advance.

“…Even if there is no grade advancing beyond Legendary, the self-exploration of each champion—the difference in power here is simply too great.”

Barnil shook his head and sighed self-deprecatingly, stroking his beard which had recently grown in the Silent Void as his face showed wonder. “Well, well… it takes merely an instant to be surpassed by a junior if one does not strive to improve.”

If being Supreme surpassed limits of being, Legends refined that limit as fundamental, becoming an ultimate lifeform escaping all restraints and exceeding ordinary imagination.

Legendary tiers were irrelevant classifications as they merely described a category of states. The so-called lower Legendary tier referred to irreversible conversion: a successful but incomplete existence. With that being said, there certainly were amongst them powerful individuals yet to attain a hundred percent conversion with the ability to defeat fully-converted Legends, as their combative ability correlated to development of the civilization where the Legend was born. Barnil himself was at that phase of being able to defeat Legendary monsters of the Mycroft continent which had since long reached the intermediate tier.

At the intermediate tier, most Legends would have completed their transformation whilst remaining in the process of exploring, considering, imagining, and conceptualizing to develop their personal combative styles. Humans were quicker than Void Behemoths and magical beasts at completing this particular phase, as they would have already adopted their own combative styles at the early Legendary tier—all that was left to do was to adapt their fighting ability. Back in the day, it took Barnil barely seventeen seconds to grandly ascend to being an intermediate Legend, fully and rapidly grasping the combative ability of the runic form.

Beyond that was the advanced Legendary tier that allegedly had essentially no divisive boundaries existing within that threshold, as each individual would be in search for the ends of their paths. Yana Milo the Glorious Era Legend had claimed that before True Gods came to be known as such thanks to cultural factors, even successful individuals in True God refinement were merely upgraded versions of artificial Legendary cultivation rituals. With requirements so high, success was virtually impossible, save for advanced Legendary champions who had understood divinity.

The Mind Lord, who was weakest at physical destruction, was strictly speaking an advanced Legend along with Joshua, Barnil himself and the Black Fog’s main body. And yet, despite being of the same level, the gap in combative ability was greater than that between Iron-tier and Legendary, with top Legends being able to directly fight Evil Gods and wielding ability comparable to True Gods, even defeating them in the brief moment of opportunity before True Gods could burst out in full power.

Even Evil Gods would never have completely surpassed that threshold.

***

At present, Joshua was streaking through psionic space one-dimensionally. With a specially-designed beacon placed aboard his flagship the Dreadnaught, he could instantaneously warp to its location regardless of distance or its location in the Void.

Now, the warrior was thinking calmly as he transited.

The power of Evil Gods, especially the weaker one, were within the presently-known Legendary advanced threshold.

The Evil God of Air, the known weakest Evil God, as well the recently unsealed Wither, Dispirit, and the Evil God destroyed right before it could be born were each powerful advanced Legendary entities. They were forces able to level a small Void civilization and decimate a planet’s construct… and that was all there was to them. Apostles were capable of repelling them individually and Joshua was confident he did not have to worry about them. While it was not as if the formidable advanced Legends Israel, Barbarossa, and Vahina were unable handle them, there would be greater assurance if they had worked together.

Progressing a class further were the Ultimates, which included the Evil God of Wither commanding endless spawn and defensive systems, along with Disparity, Famine, and Calamity—Evil Gods that had their affairs in order. According to records from the Unified Archives, they were each a world and civilization that could weaken the a planet’s composition, causing great disaster for most Void civilizations just by having their spawn invade while their name circulated across worlds.

Joshua imagined he could challenge that class of Evil Gods, albeit not through direct confrontation. He was unsure of the process, but securing victory was not a problem, be it simple or difficult. True Gods and the old Pope should have been able to handle them too, but the lack of information stopped him short of being certain, since a great gulf between the Evil Gods remained. The Black Fog’s main body was presumably of that class too, as it required seven True Gods and assistance of many Legends to destroy it—after all, matching it on equal terms and killing it were two different matters, with the latter being exponentially more difficult than the former.

A society of a grand Void civilization should possess a powerful being with ability to fight various Evil Gods head-on, or it would otherwise be difficult to ensure the legacy’s long-term stability. Such a class included the alien Psionic champion and the being he had called Imperator Amos.

A tier above it was the Evil God of Pestilence, an entity resembling Evil Gods but essentially a mutated superior lifeform considered a rampaging Legendary, the Sublimator Virus. It was also clearly a level above other Evil Gods: given the opportunity, its spawns would have grown into Void Mothers, a variant of Void Behemoths possibly more powerful than the Evil God of Air after devouring a civilization.

Its main body, the Pestilence World, was the lair and home of all Void Mothers. Although it had yet to reveal any clear ability, the sheer trouble it caused for the Steel Python of Stellaris meant that as a threat, the Pestilence was on a league of its own—perhaps equal to the Black Fog’s main body. It however remained unknown, having never really fought and with Joshua unable to estimate how powerful the Sublimator Virus was, given that he had not encountered an Evil God of its class after it sublimated a countless number of worlds.

Further upwards were the Outliers which existed beyond typical Legends.

The ancient Evil God of Fertility, born over a billion years ago, had its singular might trembling the stars, killing the lights of countless worlds with a single pass and tearing a great scar across the galaxy. The Evil God of Air was a mere outcome from the very shockwaves stirred by its journeys, the gap between them almost impenetrable. Joshua could only deduce Fertility’s might through the Evil God of Death’s ability, but eventually realized it to be a meaningless prediction: both Fertility or a successfully born Death had power to wipe out the infinite worlds within a single galaxy.

Nevertheless, Sage could match and triumph over it.

“And that is why, Joshua… you are far from the end of your path.”

The warrior had to keep his calm, for he knew unrestrained hostility was an explosive fuse that would lead to divinity going amok. Still, Joshua could not hold back a hint of a smile on his lips.

“The Multiverse is very vast,” he muttered, “and there is still a road ahead of me.”

***

Meanwhile, a vast zone thinly composed of matter lay between worlds, the necessary passage of massive fleets found at the edge of the Galaxy of Beginnings.

Circular boundaries unfurled in the Void like pale blue ripples as teleportation radiance shone one after another. Massive silver warships poured out from the circles, creating a vast formation of steel.

On one side of that formation was a dazzling, golden luminous fleet, while on the other one dark and indiscernible shrouded in the shadows. Then, with even greater dimensional waves and long howls, eight Void Behemoths appeared ahead of the Fleet from across the space like a massive shielding mountain.

It was an unusual armada to the Multiverse. They had no banners or a massive flagship that acted as the center of command, but were only marked with a unique emblem on their armor: a falling star which illuminated the land.

It was a symbol most fitting for them, the people of Starfall Era.

The fleet of Behemoths, Gold and Black, formed the distinct corners of a triangle around the silver fleet. Powerful signatures of supernatural powers fluctuated and emanated from every single zone of the Fleet—any Legendary champion observing would have realized in shock that the seemingly small fleet contained the presence of more than ten superior lifeforms.

Despite that, the expedition from the Mycroft world were not reveling in pride over their own power.

Having taken over Joshua’s duties as the acting chief commander of the fleet, Vahina scowled through her veil on the bridge of her flagship, looking out over the endless distance of the Void.

She spotted a stream of steel profoundly approaching from afar, a fleet so massive they were distinctly lensing even from the distant dimensions. The very integrity of the galaxy’s fringes shifted as they determinedly advanced, a darkness that shrouded the stars.

She sensed an unbelievably powerful presence in that remoteness, prompting her to intuitively recall the Seven Gods, the Pope and That Man’s true form. It was however unlike the Seven Gods who sat upon boundless power and far surpassed the mundane, nor unstoppable like the Pope in utter sincerity and good faith, and even less like That Man whose complete pureness was incomparable. The horrific might that appeared to be destruction incarnate seemed to exist to decimate everything before it, vanquishing all that was inferior.

Apart from the two terrible presences on rapid approach, numerous fleets were still spread throughout the edges of the galaxy. Amongst them were recon ships dispatched from fringe galaxy civilizations or small high-speed cruisers, intending to observe with mere curiosity. They nevertheless warped home immediately without hesitation upon detecting the scale of the Expeditionary Fleet and the terrible presences contained within, akin scout ships that have encountered Void Behemoths. Apart from that, certain capable fleets, powerful individuals or parties that did not believe the Mycroft civilization to be hostile simply shifted vectors, preparing to bypass them from the flanks.

“What were we saying?”

La Motte the Sword Saint’s voice rang from a communications spell, the young-looking old man already with great-grandchildren laughed leisurely. “It was ‘none shall pass’, right?”

“Certainly.”

The other Legends voiced their agreement over the spell.

The distance between galaxies of the Multiverse was not actually great, merely full of violent zones of dimensional turbulences. Their current position was, as a matter of fact, a Void passage granting easy movement through those zones, and in remaining there would have helped them repel half, or at least forty percent of invaders. As for the remaining sixty percent, with the vastness of the galaxies, there could not be absolute certainty.

This was enough.

From there onwards, no detectable ships were able to move beyond the blockade created.

At the thought of the recently improved abilities of their own and others, alongside the secret weapon being transported, every Legendary champion and crewmember felt confident.