Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

Presently, all worlds observable by intelligent life, even the most extreme or most barren ones, could maintain the presence of life with sufficiently advanced life support systems.

After all, the inability of life to survive was mainly due to the fact that they were simply too weak—they were unable to deal with extreme heat or coldness, and unable to live without air or water. Even elemental lifeforms which needed neither air nor water, nor feared extreme temperatures, would require magical energy, ether, elemental energy, or other essences.

Either way, the existence of life itself required various conditions that, if unmet, would have caused the existence to either die or enter a permanent state of hibernation.

As for superior lifeforms, one of their most fundamental abilities was the capacity to ignore all required conditions, to freely live as they wished upon any world they would care to choose.

Nonetheless, that was also where the problem lay—even such superior lifeforms would reside in the same worlds where normal being lived, albeit able to ignore their environmental conditions. Such worlds where objects, energy and dimensions could grow was essentially stable but specific worlds that existed through survivorship bias, and were detectable only because their stable lifespans were long enough to be discovered and studied by creatures with short and fragile existences.

Were there worlds completely different from such worlds?

And within those worlds, could life, or even superior lifeforms be able to survive?

***

Legends has it that in the radiant surge of the Initial Flame—the very origin point from which all worlds and creatures were born—countless bizarre worlds of brief existences were created and then died. They were like bubbles in rivers that wafted and popped, existing for different lengths of time, with those existing for the shortest periods of time meeting their ends even before the concept of time could be established upon them.

Varying speeds of light, varying gravitational constants and varying electromagnetism…those were the perplexing yet brief worlds that possessed constants completely distinct from each other, at once both proportional and disproportional, never able to understand those concepts. Not even the gods could withstand some of those, or survive it.

Perhaps that was what had been known as Chaos.

At the very present moment, the Triple Curtain was using its Reality Rewriting Terminal to create a virtual world through full use of psionic simulation. It was a chaotic, arbitrary world with entirely random constants, the interior data of which the Sequence itself was unaware of.

Speed of light that alternated between swiftness and slowness.

Distorted, expanding physical energy forms that were simply unable to combine and react towards each other.

Illogical, or indeed dimensional ripples that simply obeyed a very different and unstable set of principles.

Objects that fully rejected supernatural forces and matter of any state, be it solid, liquid, gas, or plasma—existing entirely in the realm of the fifth state of being.

The Big Crunch and the Big Bang that the gradual collapse of the virtual world itself brought about, as well as the various other forms of collapse that came in the wake of a world’s end.

And caught within that same virtual world were the Evil Gods known as Divide and Limbo, withstanding the demolition and harm that struck them from the very root of that world.

The Triple Curtain, the essence of the infinite explorer, was a creation of the race known as the Creators who founded psionic energies and the Life Preservation Sequence, which was used to watch over protect every living thing inside Stellaris. Its power was innately tied to the Psyweb ‘curtain’ which encircled all of Stellaris, and even Star the Steel Python, also known as the World Will of Stellaris, was a younger individual whose birth was personally witnessed by the Triple Curtain itself. In terms of sheer power levels, the power that the Triple Curtain could command would instantly create thousands of stars or mold a small cluster of stellar objects.

Its power and technology had brought forth new heights in the aspect of Psi. For the Sequence which could create worlds, the Evil Gods that were born from the death of worlds only meant that much.

Regretfully, however, psionic power was not the only Extraordinary power in this world, and an earlier birth could occasionally be a disadvantage as well.

[Report: Extremely irregular spatial ripples have been detected and spreading. Random virtual world unable to restrain Evil God individual—spreading of meme detected.]

[Report: Extremely irregular Extraordinary power has been detected. Random virtual world completely out of control—abnormal time flow detected.]

***

The Triple Curtain’s physical form appeared to the world as a luminous nebula, a silver-blue form resembling a compressed universe. To a certain extent, its own body and the dark nebulae that were the true forms of Evil Gods simply differed in terms of color and now, even as it controlled the random virtual world completely created from Psi to bind the Evil Gods, it was forced to cut short its manipulation of the virtual world.

In that curved dimensional bubble was a part where time itself had visibly stopped, with everything inside and out stagnating. In another part, huge piles of black mosaic smoke streamed out of the collapsing virtual world, eventually converging and assuming a shape in space—it was a nebula, the true form of an Evil God.

Because Stellaris was essentially separated from the millions of worlds beyond, the only Extraordinary powers it had were the seeds that the Sage and Joshua had brought in and the Chaotic Malice which the Evil Gods and the Masterminds behind them brought in.

[Emergency: Change of plans—implementing physical suppression and purging.]

Having ran into an unexpected situation, the Triple Curtain naturally would not wait until the two Evil Gods freed themselves. In the very instant that the virtual world was showing peculiarities, it had already prepared for the next blow—as near infinite psionic energy was directed, it prepared to warp every piece of matter within 132 light-seconds around itself, and with such absolute power, it would teleport both Divide and Limbo into the accretion disk of the large black hole at the center of the Dark Galaxy.

In turn, the Evil Gods resisted by deviating the warp coordinates, not to mention that the dimensional distortion which the black hole caused lowered the rate of successful teleportation. It was why the Triple Curtain had not done that at the very beginning, but as there was no way to quickly destroy those two entities or to isolate them, it had thus been better to teleport them to the proximity of a location that could destroy them, and slowly grind them down instead.

Psionic radiance began to shine, and a storm thus rose within the vicinity of 132 light-seconds around the Triple Curtain. Every substance, energy, and even all indescribable were layered with an obscure radiant splendor.

Even so, right in the split second that the teleportation would have begun, the dark nebula completely composed of mosaic mist—the Evil God of Divide—pulsated abruptly for a moment.

There were so many gaps over its nebula that even its inner structure was heavily damaged. Compared to the relatively well Evil God of Limbo beside itself, the Evil God of Divide had been considerably hurt when it freed itself from the virtual world, with a major proportion of its body down to its essence destroyed along with the collapse of the virtual world itself. One could tell that the Evil God of Divide was not actually powerful, and would have been directly pushed into a black hole, with all of its information thus purged away, if its foe had been Joshua.

Even so, despite having its power weakened and its body hurt, the threat which the Evil God posed would not lessen.

Instantly, the profound psionic collective which was the Triple Curtain suddenly went out of control momentarily: the processing combination of the First, Second, and Third Curtains, which had been bound together for almost a hundred million years and virtually a composite of minds, had suddenly and simultaneously issued three different commands. Since the Creators were a collective species as well, most of their designed assembly modules had to be together to fully function, and though such an arrangement had its advantages, the great sequence clashed and became erratic as the three core intelligence functions of equal authority developed differences.

Even so, it only lasted for a brief moment. Earlier, when the Triple Curtain had sensed the divisive essence of the Evil God, it had prepared accordingly and was therefore uninterrupted in its teleportation task…but it was also when the Evil God of Limbo launched another attack of its own.

It was neither an erosion, energy blast, nor a cosmic collision—in an instant, the Triple Curtain simply could not detect any form of ‘attack’, even finding the pressure around itself easing as if each of such force had completely diminished…or had indeed stagnated.

The Evil God of Limbo had stilled the information nodes inside the Triple Curtain. If it had been a human being or another similar lifeform, it was equivalent to having their brains or other mental processing organs being stopped—still, while there was no lack of stagnated nodes, not many were stagnated either, even if the chain reaction proved significantly massive. As a temporal deviation error developed between a few of those nodes as they connected with other nodes, it at once dealt much greater damage than the Evil God of Divide had. For the collective portion of the information nodes that had been stagnated, it was as if the collective portion of the information nodes which had not been stagnated belonged to an entirely different individual. With each of the two sides having the same clearance and bent on running diagnostics on the other that had developed ‘errors’, the Triple Curtain was hence forced to stop its group warp and carry out internal repairs, while creating a patch to adapt itself towards the Evil Gods’ attacks.

Either way, the brief state of limbo had now ironically caused a divide far more horrific than what Divide itself could manage. Here, one would have to mention that the combined force between Limbo and Divide was remarkably effective—was it Limbo, in actual fact, which was driving a wedge between things, or was it Divide which was leaving things in stillness?

Meanwhile, in the second that the Triple Curtain paused its warping, the Evil God of Limbo attacked again.

This time, it was stagnation of the physical layer. Every bit of the Triple Curtain’s strength was removed, allowing it to be shaken off by the Dark Galaxy which was whirling at 700 kilometers per second. While assuredly not rapid, it was also when the legions of Chaos spawns had come down upon it—with all manners of self-destruction, they would interfere with the Triple Curtain and buy time, with stellar-class Spawn Mothers triggering energy tides like supernova bursts, assaulting the Triple Curtain’s surface layer.

Of course, there was no harm done at all. Neither the Evil Gods nor their spawns were able to hurt the Triple Curtain, save from running various forms of interference to trouble it. Thus, instead of staying and fighting the Triple Curtain, it was better to handle the other individual.

However, just when the Evil Gods of Limbo and Divide changed direction and were ready to head for Joshua as he fought the Evil God of Famine, Famine itself had incidentally lost every sort of reaction in one magnificent explosion.

The Evil God of Famine had faded away!

Then, both Limbo and Divide saw that the Four-Armed Giant God unhesitatingly leaping in one sub-lightspeed kicking motion, striking true on a part of vacuum that appeared empty.

Booooom —cosmic matter from broken stars within the sparse nebula was accelerated by a fearsome force, shaped into mechanical waves distinctly heard even in space. Then, amidst that resounding echo that rang beyond 400 decibels, an entity with neither form nor appearance left a transparent trail along the turbid nebula.

Naturally, ‘neither form nor appearance’ applied only to most lifeforms—for Joshua, however, it was clearly an Evil God sent flying from this kick…

The Evil God of Avoidance.

The power of Avoidance had always kept it unseen under any scenario, and could bend light, energy ripples, gravity, or indeed anything, for that matter. What formed the Evil God of Avoidance was not normal substance or energy in the universe, which explained why it could easily hide itself in the quantum aspect, phasing through walls or traversing freely between the realms of spirit, Shadow, Psi, or even the physical world, and not to mention simply exist as a presence of information.

That so-called avoidance was being unseen, deliberate disguising as if it did not exist. Theoretically speaking, any perception or attack would not be able to touch the Evil God as it could dodge any damage, including being ‘detected’—in other word, it would always exist in blind spots: photosensitive creatures could not see the radiance it reflected, energy creatures could not pick up on its energies, machine beings could not find its data flow, and Psi lifeforms could not sense their existence.

Avoidance was the biggest problem to tackle even with Joshua’s Steel Vision. It was not a perfect observation method against it, as Avoidance itself could still hide, at least mostly.

Nevertheless, Joshua did not have to see it fully, for all he needed to do to solve the problem was to destroy it. Therefore, the Giant God conjured partial Steel Strength crystals at the bottom of his feet—the frame of a world and a supernatural singularity that he kicked Avoidance with, triggering an explosion that would detonate a world.

If Avoidance itself could have actually evaded energy blasts from realms of spiritual to physical, it would have long evaded Stellaris. Why would it have bothered with having the Ultimate Sublimator Composite activate the Permanent Void Anchor Points? It was as the saying goes: there are no invincible powers, just a lack of effort.

Elaborate abilities were never once useful against great power.

The Evil God of Avoidance stopped retreating after being so discreetly kicked off and was herded to the same planetary region as Divide and Limbo. That was also the moment when the Triple Curtain stirred a wave of psionic storm, blowing off the Chaos spawns that tried to stop it.

Without any expression on his face, Joshua and Triple Curtain approached those stars, one standing up front and the other behind.

They encircled the three Evil Gods.

What ensued was a chase, and it was naturally the Evil Gods that were being chased.

In the dimensions where both sides were controlling dimensions to interdict their adversaries’ warping and teleportation, space itself was distorted, while time was affected by great mass. Along that path of pursuit surpassing lightspeed, the stars along the way were reduced to supernova dust in their aftershocks, marvels of future civilizations as they collective burst in radiance and spatial radiation, a straight trail of nebulas eventually known as the Path of Silver Stars.

On the scale of the Multiverse, lightyears’ distance was a canvas dyed by the intermittent bursting or bright energy shockwaves. Countless stars would be sent flying due to the gravitational slingshot effect, with their own gravity in turn moving other stars. It was a shift that could only clearly be seen over dozen thousands of lightyears, and yet that same shift had already been accomplished.

The Evil Gods tried to counter attack, and while not ineffective since it did affect Joshua by causing his mind to split, slow down, and even lose track of their positions for a moment, he was not alone—the Triple Curtain would help him when he was attacked and vice versa.

The hordes of Chaos spawns that could have destroyed many civilizations were not even counted as a pebble in that battle, while the legions of World Eaters that could leave many a Void Empire in fear could not survive the mere shockwaves from the trail of those two pinnacle champions.

In the end, Joshua and the Triple Curtain chased, or more precisely, ‘herded’ the Evil Gods to a spot close to the whirling dimensional anomaly, which was at once monochromatic and paradoxical.

In other words, nearby the Permanent Void Anchor Point.

[Target confirmed: Our next objective is to close the supermassive Permanent Void Anchor Point.]

After having made a hotfix for itself against Divide and Limbo, the Triple Curtain was basically dominant—neither Divide’s neutron disintegrator or Limbo’s physical stagnation to create absolute zero had any effect on it. After all, if not repressing the swirl of emotions to ensure the survival of most life, the Triple Curtain would not have feared Evil Gods if unburdened.

The Four Divine Rings were reusing the swirl of emotions while unleashing the combat might of the Triple Curtain.

[Analysis: It is a grand undertaking that would be far more difficult than destroying these Evil Gods.]

“I don’t think that’s the only problem.”

Joshua fought the Evil God of Limbo even as he maintained contact with the Triple Curtain—the warrior’s thoughts would pause for an instant and develop difference in personal perception, but he would not be left at a loss by such a thing. Whether stagnated or not, his one purpose was to fight and to destroy the Chaos before him.

Therefore, he punched out to move all still objects around him, and the Evil God that had created a spatial barrier was hence shattered along with its own barrier. Joshua then turned towards the massive paradoxical spiral before him, somberly saying, “We should be worried about the fellow in the Void.”

Right now, Joshua felt that his ability had surpassed most ordinary Evil Gods considerably—his full power had already reached such a level back when he had consumed the Evil God of Wither, and in the subsequent battles and development, he had even become a pinnacle existence that was headed for the threshold of the Wise Ones.

In the past, the very spawns of the Evil God of Famine had destroyed the world of Karlis with relative ease. Nevertheless, that same Evil God which true form had led to countless Legendary-class spawns roaming the Void was now a mere thing that Joshua could kill in half a minute once its true form was exposed…and now, though the three other Evil Gods before him possessed unusual abilities that could even completement each other to develop a troubling chain reaction, but beneath the subjugation of absolute power, it was only a matter of time before he and the Triple Curtain would destroy them.

Certainly, those Evil Gods would not be complete forms…they were the defeated, captured and thus held captive, becoming scouts or indeed a doorknob placed inside Stellaris.

The only issue was the Ultimate Sublimator Composite, the being lingering outside Stellaris, which was indeed the real and biggest problem.

“Do it. Even I can’t simply distort the space around the Permanent Void Anchor Point. It would be the best chance to destroy them.”

As he spoke, Joshua clenched all four of his fists. He was now in his perfect form after having seized and consumed stars along the wall without stopping, and as long as the three Evil Gods did not flee, Joshua had the feeling that he could choke each of those Evil Gods to death and stuff them into the black hole, where they would be used as sources of energy.

Then, in that precise instant—perhaps some sort of mechanism had been triggered due to the arrival of Joshua and the Triple Curtain, or the defeat of the Evil Gods—to put in simpler words, the massive Void portal had grown to a certain threshold in that period. Moreover, the speed at which paradoxical spiral rotated also grew more rapid, its black and white hues making it a form containing distinct light and darkness.

One could see dozens of dark shadows resembling nebulae, as well as physical bodies that seemed to be bursting out of a fountain, or indeed a supernova eruption shooting out of the center of the Permanent Void Portal amidst a profound dimensional tremor so violent that it left even light itself in pieces.

Within that split second, the energy unleashed could have kept a good portion of the Dark Galaxy illuminated in the future.

“…Oh.”

Joshua’s mouth was hanging open, and though he certainly was not affected by the dimensional tremor, the Giant God let out a rare but stiff breath…which actually was a plasma fluorescence comparable to a black hole. Then, as he watched a dozen unknown Evil Gods and incalculable ranks of Ultimate Entitles poured forth without ceasing from the expanding Permanent Void Anchor Point, he said rigidly, “I knew it—it certainly could not have been so simple.”

[Task report: Preset workload rising to 1669587%. Radcliffe, predetermined working timeframe is more than 8 days, 17 hours, 41 minutes and 52 seconds.]

“Run those numbers again.”

Joshua could only sigh again in the face of such a sight. Thus, he raised both his right hands high above. Behind him, a profound mass convergence point began to assume form, the empowered gravitational point completely dispelling the dimensional tremors which the Void Anchor Point was wreaking.

In the same moment when the black hole mass manifested, the Giant God’s body also began to enlarge incessantly. Its body, which had had already been comparable to star, quickly reached the size of a red dwarf, spreading even more horrific gravitational force to warp the straight line of Ultimate Fiends into a curved formation.

At that very instant, Joshua had completely dispelled his human form and transformed into a massive and ever-expanding silver world—one could see another colossal mass convergence point inside the world, creating intricate and erratic arcs as the different mass points exerted their attractive forces upon each other. Boundless gravity was hence drawn and released as they rotated, converted into a near infinite source of momentum.

Blackhole Engine.

And within that gravitational boundary that toyed with dimensions and the black hole that vaporized all substance, a complex message was being delivered. It converged and assembled, before finally turning into a voice that the Triple Curtain was familiar with.

“Just minus twenty to thirty times will do.”