Soul of Searing Steel

Does Master really need a mount at all?

On the earth's surface, after blasting its strongest dragon's breath, Black witnessed Joshua transforming himself into a mass of blazing red flame as he charged through the wave of spell attacks, making his way towards the sky fortress. Its heart is not filled with worry about what might happen to its master but with doubts about its own existence and its purpose.

The warrior could run faster than Black. He could even fly on his own. Not to mention that his power level is way beyond draconic horse's level. Black often felt that it was insignificant during battles— Master… does he really need a mount?

The draconic dragon may be troubled with worries, but the battle ensued.

In the middle of the sky.

Even though the warrior has broken through the protective barriers and the spells, the sky fortress still has some resistance.

The remaining magic runes unleashed a blinding bright light the moment Joshua penetrated the protective barriers. The invisible magical energy turned into a translucent flow of current, flooding the warrior in attempt to drown him with magic energy.

With magic energy, a derivative of the power that existed at the beginning of creation, it was possible to achieve anything when wielded by a powerful mage. Pure magic energy does anything because there needs to be a direction for something to happen. But that is also where its strength lies—all things would have been fused and annihilated by the overly pure magic power. It was also the simplest and crudest way to wield magic power.

However, for Joshua, that was just too simple and crude. The translucent wave of magic gushed towards the warrior. But the warrior ignored the incoming wave of magic attack. He simply couldn't be bothered to even defend himself. He charged at the attack without showing even the slightest hesitation.

Even if the magic power could fuse with everything and destroy everything, it would require a period of time before the process is completed. Not to mention that the warrior was very near to the sky fortress. No matter how dense the pure magic power was, it was not able to fuse with the warrior in that split second when the warrior charged through the magic wave. The red light flashed across the magic wave as Joshua crushed another magic rune, which gleamed with blue light, with a swing of his greatsword.

The sky fortress only had three magic runes remaining to keep it floating in the sky, which was half of what it had. The fortress was initially on offensive suddenly ceased fire. Then, a large number of magic circles vanished. The tidal wave of magic energy tried to maintain its momentum from being absorbed into the atmosphere.

The enemy was getting weaker by the second. Joshua's momentum, on the other hand, has increased so greatly that he was becoming unstoppable. The outer layer of his skin fused with the magic energy. And because of the impact that he has endured from charging through the magic energy, he also sustained some amount of internal damage. However, the azure orb began spinning rapidly as it started generating the life force to heal the body of the warrior. Due to the regeneration power provided by the Azurite and his own regenerative ability of a Gold-tier champion, Joshua is not affected by the injuries at all and continued with the battle. The warrior was unstoppable. Right after he crushed the magic rune before him, he went right on to the next magic rune.

This time, he went all out.

A red lightning flashed in the sky of Delaire, which is located in between Babel Province and the Mountains of Origins. That lightning was so bright that it overshadowed the sun. In the other cities, the elves, which are engaged with the endless horde of golems and waves of meteor rains, were not aware of that. However, some of them did notice the phenomenon.

They found out later that all of the golems staggered a little. At the same time, far in the distant sky, another light that was even more blinding than the red lightning emerged and overshadowed everything else—it became a sun of its own kind.

"What the heck is that thing? New golem?"

An elf who was hiding in his own home looked up at the sky. The other elves who noticed the phenomenon in the sky, even the golems, looked towards the direction of the light.

The elves on the Delaire Peninsula were able to witness the happening of the phenomenon much clearer than the other elves in other places.

An Elven explorer, who is hiding in the caves and on his journey to explore the wild, peered out of the caves cautiously and looked at the sky. A rumbling noise came from the direction he was facing which caused him to inhale sharply as his eyes widened up.

"A floating city… is collapsing?!"

In the middle of the sky, the sky fortress was slowly collapsing, exploding from the inside. Five out of the six magic runes that kept the sky fortress floating have been completely destroyed. The only magic rune that remained was flashing brightly with bluish light as it struggled to keep the sky fortress floating. However, it was not generating enough energy to keep the entire fortress afloat so it was slowly collapsing.

The body of the sky fortress remained surrounded with flickering magic circles and translucent hexagonal protective barriers. Several beams of corrosive rays were launched from the sky fortress in an attempt to strike down the man who stood by, watching it fall to its doom expressionlessly.

All efforts were futile. Though the black-haired man seemed exhausted and have sustained quite a great amount of injuries from the impact of the magic attack, he was still too powerful to be taken out by merely a few beams of attacks. The warrior waved his hands around as he placed the greataxe in front of him as a shield and blocked every attack that was aimed at him. The axe remained unscathed.

That was the final struggle of the sky fortress before it fell to its demise. A more violent explosion came from the interior of the fortress—a backfire caused by the destruction of the magic circuits in the fortress. Fire pillars and lightning escaped the cracks on the surface of the sky fortress, turning the floating giant into a meteor. The fortress was completely destroyed by a deafening explosion as ring-shaped shockwaves spread out from the epicenter of the explosion. Fireballs were spat onto earth.

Most of the aerial golems in the sky have been annihilated. Even though there were still a small number of them, they were no longer posing a threat to the people of that world.

The battle ended momentarily.

Upon descending to the ground, Joshua deactivated the divine armaments' transformations of Ying and Ling. The silver-haired girl seemed excited and joyful from the fact that she has finally been engaged with a fierce battle. The black-haired boy, on the other hand, seemed somewhat unhinged as his eyes were filled with insecurity because he was used as a shield to resist the corrosive rays. However, on the whole, the atmosphere is considered relatively cheerful. Even Joshua smiled a little when he saw the wreckage of the sky fortress scattered all over the ground.

Roland and Black have also arrived at the spot where the warrior and the two divine armaments were. Upon greeting them and congratulating them for winning the battle against the sky fortress, the holy knight went straight to the point and said, "Joshua, there are still a large number of golems headed our way. We better not stay here for too long."

"Noted."

Joshua nodded in agreement. Of course he knew that there were more than a dozen of stone giants and an endless army of golems headed their way. Those monsters have gathered from several provinces to annihilate their enemies. They were all tasked to destroy Joshua and his friends. "They really think highly of us, to gather all their forces across the entire world just to destroy us."

Well, as for the reason behind that… It seemed that the Azurite was the cause of everything.

The warrior lifted his hand and placed it on his chest. He could feel high heat from the Azurite. It was vibrating at a very high frequency and beating like a real heart, as if eager to get into a battle.

As the Legacy of Order, it was naturally disgusted by the existence of Chaos. Chaos felt the same towards Order. There was no exception in any case in the entire universe. If those monsters have sensed the presence of the Azurite and Order in the body of the warrior, then the situation made perfect sense.

"So master, where are we headed now?" Ying asked out of her own curiosity. "Before this, Black was only taking us towards a random direction because we were fleeing from our enemies. We're totally not familiar with this world."

"Yes. The elves that we met earlier on had only given us some books that only allow us to have a rough idea about this world. This world they called the Illgner Continent… the information they have on their own world is so poor to the point that it's somewhat pathetic though. We can't even get a proper map of this world."

Ling calmed himself and joined the conversation as he started complaining. He hates uncertainties. "Up till this point, we're still don't know the origin of our enemies. We have no telling who is controlling the puppets. The puppets usually need a commander to instruct them, right?"

"Rest your mind now. Those elves have spent over 300 years researching and yet they only know so little about their world."

Roland shrugged and looked completely unconcerned. However, he was troubled with something else. The holy knight threw up his hands and said, "Oh my Seven Gods… I don't think we will be able to understand anything within such a short time. Since we have no other choice, we shall battle against whichever enemy that crosses path with us. We shall kill all of the monsters! We can only do that."

Having spoken out loud, everyone including the draconic horse, looked at him simultaneously. The holy knight could not help but feel a little uneasy. The silver-haired girl then spoke with a soft voice, "Seems like he's being synthesized…"

Roland was confused by her words.

"…?"

As they discussed what Ying meant by the word 'synthesized', Joshua walked over and looked at the wreckages of the sky fortress as if he was looking for something.

With the guidance of the Azurite, he found a strange item among the wreckages.

It was a light wheel that seemed to be half damaged.

The light wheel emitted a faint blue light, just like the energy core of the Thunderous Mountain they fought with. The light wheel is covered with cracks. Its surface was flickering. Sometimes bright and sometimes dull. It was releasing a strange force. There was a vague sense of the Chaos present in that force and because of that, the Azurite responded.

Joshua knitted his brows as he observed the object in his hand.

Yet another light wheel? How tough could this thing be that it actually survived that violent explosion of the sky fortress?

Recalling the spiritual world he visited a while back, he remembered that the Soul of the Forests had hinted him to 'collect all of the light wheels that he comes across'. The warrior kept the light wheel and remained silent. Then, he turned around and walked towards the others. As he walked towards them, he spoke with a loud voice, "Alright, everyone. Get ready now. We need to move. If we stayed any longer, the enemies will catch up with us and give us more trouble."

"Where?"

Roland gave up on discussing what Ying meant. He turned around and looked doubtfully at the warrior, "We don't even know where we are."

"That doesn't mean I don't know. I know where we are."

Joshua shook his head and turned towards the draconic horse. With a knowing look, he explained, "The direction that Black was headed to earlier, is the direction we will be heading to. It picked the right direction. Not bad for my mount. Now, we need to depart as soon as we can. I'll explain everything else when we're on our way towards our destination."

It was a simple instruction. None of them objected. The moment after everyone climbed onto Black's back, the draconic horse sprinted towards the direction it was previously headed to. Meanwhile, at the end of the horizon far in the distance, the stone giants and the golems slowly appeared.

On the back of Black, Joshua told everyone about his experience in the spiritual world. He detailed the conversation he had with the will of the Soul of the Forests.

Due to time constraint, the Soul of the Forests did not explain the details about this world. However, it has given him two crucial information—The origin of this elven world, and the thing that controlled the golems.

By putting this two information together, one could roughly piece together the truth.

The beginning of everything came from the ending of the 'Glorious Era' of the Mycroft Continent—the time right before the 'Three Hundred Lost Years'.

That was the era where all races had formed an alliance to resist Chaos.