Soul of Searing Steel

A superior entity, huh.

In the heart of the battlefield, Joshua withdrew both sword and axe to stare at the behemoth before his eyes, as well as the faintly discernible translucent gravity shielding, his eyes flashing as information streamed like a waterfall.

It was five thousand six hundred and thirty meters long—three times the average size of ships within the Midgardian fleet and twice the size of the Central Midgardian Fleet flagship, the Pioneer. Regardless of any extraordinary powers or psionic abilities it wielded, it only needed to crash down to destroy the surface of a prefecture, or an entire prefecture if it went any faster.

While its ability was truly powerful, it remained a Supreme tier. Joshua withdrew his gaze—he had analyzed much about the monster through the energy ripples, margins of dimensional distortion and gravity shift around it. Clearly, the superior entity possessed a massive unrivaled energy source even when it came to typical battleships. Still, though its stalwart gravity shielding could parry Joshua's blade of Steel it was not proof that its power has arrived Legendary—instead, the superior entity did not refine its life essence and was simply 'big'.

When it came to tiers, perhaps the threshold of the being's level was at most Supreme.

It was the truth despite being an unimaginable fact in itself. Just as the largest creature on land had been the forty-ton Seismosaurus while the largest creature in the sea was the blue whale which was upwards of a hundred and seventy tons, the weakest Void Behemoth that inhabits the Multiverse was a leviathan comparable to a small plane. Different ecosystems determine the sizes of species, and if these dark creatures lived in the Mycroft Continent, they would at most have the size of creatures ranging from Silver to Supreme. In the world of Stellaris, however, they could mutate to such terrifying form, with the endless resources of the stars multiplying them by the millions.

"Come to think of it, with the strict hierarchy of Evil God minions, then the Void Mother should possess Legendary ability."

In that instant, Joshua was not too mindful about what the superior entity which was seemingly brewing something with the intent to unleash an attack. His vision bypassed the endless swarm, looking towards the faraway stellar region several light-seconds away at the giant green psionic vortex that swirled slowly. Like a cold and callous eye lackadaisically imbued in the middle of the universe, it was precisely at the other end of that psionic vortex that the million-meter long Void Mother was watching the world on the other end with its equally callous, cold and malevolent gaze.

So, a Legend could wield such ability as well? Almost a million meter in length and could still apparently grow without stopping—and if it did keep its uninhibited growth, would it grow from a small planet to a satellite, before becoming a planet or a gaseous star? If so, then what about nebulas? And if indeed could, where do Legend and Divine differ?

Hence, Joshua could not help remembering some words obscurely shared to him by Zinsen, the God of Might, as he viewed the Path of Light alongside Him of the Seven.

—Don't become us.

Us. Them. Seven Gods. Deity. A simple line of logic that could be described as a hint too expressly stated. The God of Might's meaning was simple—He had not hoped that Joshua would become some deity and would instead continue the path of Legendary and the Path of Light, the latter of which was once the road the Sage trod upon. The God of Fortune and Despair, Father Nature, and the many gods of old had shared the same opinion as well—they all used their lives and actedproveroof that the road of gods was a consecrated yet shackled one, a power that came with a lock, hardly an ascension for one who was free.

Legendary was boundless. If the Legendary-tier Void Mother had become such a feared being as it wandered the stars, then what of the true forms of Evil Gods that patrol the worlds? The warrior nodded slowly as he realized the fact, and thoughtfully closed his eyes as if meditating.

—As expected. It truly inspires when one becomes aware of the endless possibilities in the future.

"Watch out, Master!"

"Attack!"

Ying and Ling's sudden warnings echoed in the depths of the spiritual sea, although Joshua was not too concerned—he still had a little strength to react towards the enemy's assault even as he became distracted in the middle of a battlefield to ponder a much more profound issue. Against the tremendous psionic luminous sphere attack that was over three hundred meters in energy signature, the warrior focused a little once more, opening his eyes.

Click.

With a ring of scraping metals, the Steel giant who stood over the corpse of a Void creature finally moved differently and no longer folded his arms before his chest and stretched out all four arms. At that moment, a whirling Steel halo appeared over Joshua's back, while the warrior raised his right hand, his palm slightly opened. Formless crimson radiance thus combined with silver Steel Strength, forming a concave translucent shield that was approximately two kilometers long and held unwaveringly before the warrior.

At the very next second, the massive luminous sphere struck the concave shielding like a jet stream of water into the polished concave bowl. Shapeless light shot on the refined concave mirror and was deflected with no delay. Soon, luminous spheres followed-up incessantly one after another, while Joshua merely shifted his arm and parried it all, shoving every blow black to its owner.

With a slight use of intelligence, these pure energy blows were of no significance.

Boom! Every returned sphere struck the body of the superior entity and exploded. Dark green flesh and blood, as well as fluorescent psionic particles thus wafted across the universe and took the form of a fog over several kilometers. Even so, for the monster, such an attack was merely akin to accidentally biting the flesh around its own mouth—though painful, it was far from the threshold of dying. However, precisely because it was enduring a pain never experienced since its birth, the superior entity which clearly acted as the commander of the Void swarm swiftly unleash streaks of psionic ripples towards the many Void creatures that were in slight disarray under the bombardment of the Third Fleet.

Kill that dangerous creature together!

Once the psionic ripples reached its recipients, every Void aberrant including those that were going to encircle Nostradamus portal shifted their heading at once and reassembled their formations. Then, with an orderly stance, all of them followed their commander and swarmed towards Joshua with an unstoppable might!

"Don't just stay on defense. We shall attack too, and support our reinforcement!"

Having seen that the swarm was changing targets, the Third Commander promptly barked an order with a voice filled with vigor unlike before. Without sparing anything, all four-hundred and fifty ships of the fleet strafed the swarm, even overloading their psionic engines and assuming a formation of zero defense without any hint of self-preservation. Every dual and triple cannon assembled energies without stopping, spraying materialized psionic energies condensed as psionic lances.

It was hence a pity that the lances were only effective against the Main Force-class and Scout-class Void creatures despite its power. The projectiles could swiftly cull dozen-meter class up to dozen hundred-meter class monsters, but could not harm the thousand-meter class behemoths—much less the superior entity that came deliberately to where the fleet was and used its thick gravity shield to block most of the psionic lances.

Although the fleet could penetrate the gravity shielding if they timed their shots simultaneously, it could not deal lethal damage. Every crewmember could even see that the blood and flesh on the surface of the entity's body had been turned to ash by the searing heat of a million degrees, before regenerating in the very next second as if it virtually ignoring the principle of energy constant. Their attacks could at most slay thousands of normal beasts outside the superior entity's protection, which did not do much to change the state of affairs.

Meanwhile, Joshua did nothing against swarm onslaught that numbered up to millions.

Or perhaps not—with a powerful light that gradually grew in power by every second, every being that was watching him could see that a blinding light was unleashed out of the vortex on the warrior's chest.

The Nuclear Heart Furnace was the most vital extraordinary organ within the warrior's Steel body, something that even surpassed the importance of the dense shell and bones of degenerate matter shaped by Steel Strength. The heart that burns like a sun supplied Joshua with virtually endless energy—without it, the invincible body would lose all power and become a deathly statue. When he warped consecutively and directly from the Midgardian homeworld to the distant Garden of Flowers colony a few light years away, the furnace had virtually extinguished but was now brimming with energy once more.

Unbelievable? Not quite, for everything happened for a reason—be it the urgent energy decline or the current brimming of energy. The current inconceivable sight only happened because Joshua had suddenly figured out a critical phase, which was why everything was different now.

"Having abandoned the Azurite, I no longer convert Chaos beast as energy for my body. That was why I designed the Nuclear Furnace Heart—to replace it as an eternal propelling core to fight."

Still standing over the corpse of the colossal beast, Joshua spread all four arms, with golden circuit patterns appearing over its silver shell. They came from the warrior's heart and spread all over his body, the golden burning light replacing the original cool silver, turning the Steel giant into a human-shaped sun that emits heat that could melt anything.

"However, the Nuclear Heart has limits—what it burns is my mass, which is why I am at a tremendous disadvantage in attritional battles, a clear reverse from my previous form."

"That would not do. It is completely different from my initial conception. I have to change my thinking."

Incredible energy ripples and sensational gravity shift started to crumple the giant corpse beneath the warrior's feet, which then turned into huge sheets of pale-green smoke and metallic steam. In the beginning, the Void monster's residual mass had intended to spread across all directions and become inconspicuous particles in the vacuum of the Void, but under the influence of tremendous gravity all of it turned into a swirling hurricane, seeping into the vortex before Joshua's chest that was turning from gold into white.

Why should he be inflexible in regards to the source of his energy fuel? Anything could be fuel for the Furnace, be it the soul of monsters, or flesh.

As apparent skewing and distortion appeared over space, every corpse and clouds of fragments left after the onslaught of Scout-class and Main Force-class aberrations within several kilometers turned into hundreds of streams under the incredible power of mass-shifting ripples and endless energy cyclones. All of them soon converged into Joshua's chest vortex and entered his body, supplying a never-before-had energy as the Nuclear Heart burned and whirled!

The King of Searing Soul, Chaos as His fuel.

"All of you are my fuel."

The massive Steel giant raised his head as he stood now amidst the Void, his eyes glinting with a radiance that was combusting to an illustrious whiteness. Then, he rose up directly and transformed into a golden star, charging forward against the imposing Void swarm as if a star was crashing down upon them!

Raging flow borne of millions of monsters shaped into a celestial cone, and with the few superior entities as their core surged simultaneously towards Joshua at the thousandth of one lightspeed. It was an attack sufficient to destroy the entire Midgardian Colony Fleet—a trump card yet to be played against them, and it appears from the instinctive behavior of the swarm that the Steel giant before then was far more threatening than a fully-equipped armada. It was a being that could deal total destruction upon them!

The besieging force of the massive swarm was almost apocalyptic. Their tremendous mass shift, along with psionic empowerment was even throwing the dimensions into turmoil. Translucent spatial tides almost visible to the naked eye tore every mass between the two sides into the most compact of dust clouds, and it was the same fearsome gravity shift that sealed against all possibility of warping, preventing any chance of reinforcement from Nostradamus who was warping here and the Third Fleet who was accelerating to engage the swarm.

Hence, in the next spectacle, the immeasurable black cone swarm struck the golden star that was Joshua with no deviance.

And would Joshua retreat? He had faced a direct gamma-ray strike, experience the falling star from the Evil God of Calamity—an onslaught of a million Void creatures was almost an insignificant challenge.

There was no need to evade.

Greatsword and greataxe appeared in the Steel giant's hands and he began to rotate like a spiral. In that second Joshua was about to crash into the Void swarm, he turned into a golden drill that turned ten thousand times per second and spread heat of over a million degrees. It caused space itself to shift in great waves which fused into one with the indestructible Steel shell, utterly unleashing his full power. The tip of the drill had already shown signs of shattered dimensions, with crimson psionic light illuminating half the stars—facing the oncoming swarm with a rivaling force.

And in the very next instant, the massive beast swarm crashed in the most inelegant fashion into the Steel giant that had now turned into a drill.

It was as if time froze.

Then, light similar to a supernova appeared by the edge of the Beam System.