Soul of Searing Steel

On the Mycroft Continent.

The Church of the Seven Gods, the Sacred Mountain in the distant sea.

The old Pope stood at the peak of the mountain as he looked through the gloomy clouds dyed golden by the setting sun, staring into the distance.

Igor was looking at everything such as the breeze and also the increasing number of the Pentashade Dragons far away from him. Nothing escaped his sharp eyes.

The number of the Berserk Dragon Legion by the borders of the gray island Aida was growing day by day as the wars across the continent calmed. Before that, they were not able to seal off the regions around the island. However, their number had grown so much that they had conquered all regions surrounding the island.

The Sacred Mountain had become an isolated island after being cut off by the Berserk Dragon Legion. Even the kingdoms in the distant south and other forces across the main continent faced difficulties that kept their reinforcement force from arriving at the Sacred Mountain. Before those force could arrive at the harbors to recover their force after sustaining a huge loss getting through the blockages of the Berserk Dragon force, the other kingdoms were not able to extend their help to the Sacred Mountains.

Igor looked at the sky, his long silvery white hair swayed behind him. He was very old. The old Pope was not like the other Legendary-tier champions who had already transformed their bodies into the perfect state when they were young. Igor was just an ordinary old man like the others. He was getting older as time passed by. He witnessed his own skin sagging and wrinkles spread as he aged.

However, that did not mean his power was deteriorating. Instead, it was just the opposite. Igor was currently the strongest human in the continent. He was worthy of his title for being the number one in the world. He was like a god who walks among men.

The old Pope always had his Bright Scepter next to him. His eyes were bright and sharp as always. He was capable of seeing the central forces of the army of the Abyssal Dragons that were gathering in the depths of the ocean and the space beyond the clouds. There were a total of three powers so strong that they have overshadowed everything else in the world. They were not attempting to hide their existence. Instead, they revealed their true forms to the world as they charged their powers.

Those were the three Legendary-tier giant dragons of the Pentashade Dragons. These powerful beings were unleashing a heavy pressure to the world, forcing Igor to be unable to ignore them. Because of that, the Pope was forced to stay at the Sacred Mountain in order to face them and to make sure that they did not try anything funny before the war started.

The two sides stood there facing each other for a very long time. It began about ten days ago. The stalemate continued until both sides had gathered enough force to go to war.

“Huh?” Suddenly, Igor turned around and look towards the east. He muttered to himself softly, “That is…”

The Anos Abyss, which had always been covered with storms and strong waves had suddenly become calm. Even the Abyssal presence had stopped spreading. However, he did not feel joy. Instead, he furrowed his eyebrows and muttered to himself again, “Did they fail?”

Igor could sense that, right in the center of Anos Abyss, the dimension from another world that was located at the ferocious gigantic vortex was currently influencing the Mycroft Continent and slowly transforming the world into part of the Dark Abyss.

Although the old Pope was a little shocked by the thought that the mission might still fail even with two Supreme-tier champions, Robzek, and Joshua, it was not like the old Pope had never taken that as one of the worst possibilities.

“Although that is a little out of my expectation, it is not the worst outcome.’

The old silver-haired man looked in the direction where the three Legendary-tier giant dragons were. His heart ached. With the setting of the Church of the Seven Gods, he was confident that he could completely suppress the strange phenomena caused by the rift in Anos Abyss as he could even seal the rift and rescue everyone there. However, the champions among the Pentashade Dragon forces would also have their opportunities to attack the Sacred Mountain once the most powerful being in the world leaves the fort unattended. Although Igor was fearless and was confident enough to wipe them out, the old Pope maintained so to not make any sudden changes in his plan.

In the distance, the presence of the Dark Abyss was getting stronger by the seconds. The old Pope’s face was getting tighter too. The Pentashade Dragons’ morale began to expand.

Right before Igor was ready to make his move to cut off the connection that was converging the Dark Abyss and the Mycroft Continent, the Chaos presence that gathered at Anos Abyss suddenly stopped expanding.

That presence had grown weaker as if it was being resisted by the Mycroft Continent. Igor could also vaguely sense that there was a strong power brewing on the other side of the Dark Abyss. At that time, Igor knew that power and he was very familiar with that power, too.

The old Pope momentarily dispersed the gathering power on the ‘Scepter of the White’ and narrowed his eyes. Then he thoughts about it and laughed.

“Never mind then, I shall trust you all one more time.”

The old man fixed his eyes on the three Legendary-tier giant dragons and said, “If things really turned for the worst, it is still not too late for me to make a move by then.”

—Back at Bloodmoon Abyss.

Joshua crushed the final piece of a crystal fragment he held in his hand.

A dark soul escaped from the crushed crystal and mourned while it drifted away into the void. However, before it could escape into the void, it was caught by the dark aura around the body of the warrior and was devoured by it.

The power of ‘Satsui Hadou’ from the shards of souls belonged to the fallen enemies. Although Joshua had named power, he knew the existence of his Glorious Strength better than anyone. For instance, Roland and Morlaix actually believed that Joshua should have called that power the ‘Abyss of the Souls’ or something similar to that.

After acquiring some vital information about the ritual of convergence from Mandagar which he had killed, Joshua turned around and looked at the relentless fluctuation of the dimensional space at the border of the plane. Then, he flew back into the air and went straight towards the Epoch.

Not long after, he arrived at the ark.

At that time, Hill, Funa, and Black had already transformed themselves back to their selves. They had exhausted their power to the core and were passed out at the side of the deck on the Epoch, leaving Robzek frowning as he stood by the deck feeling a little dizzy. He used his Holy Light to restrain the parasitic brain-eating worms in his head and slowly reduce that creature into nothing.

After all, he was not Joshua. He was not capable of pulling the parasitic worm right out of his brain with his bare hands like how the warrior did. Or perhaps it could that the method that the Holy Knight was using to remove the parasitic creature was the safest and also the simplest way that most people could accept. However, that method would require that there was no disturbance. Furthermore, it took a longer time to complete.

The moment the warrior landed on the deck of the Epoch , Robzek had cleansed the parasitic worm in his brain. After having the weight lifted off of him, his Combat Aura and his holy light instantly became more flowy and began circulating his entire body. Because of that, he managed to recover fifty percent of his power.

“What’s your status?” It was not the time for pleasantries. Joshua instantly asked the holy knight, “Do you still have the energy to help the others get rid of their parasitic worms?”

Robzek took a glance at the scar on the warrior’s left side of the head. He could roughly guess how the warrior got rid of the parasitic worm from his head. Then, the holy knight mumbled to himself, “It seems that you will not be able to use that method anymore.”

But he nodded and said, “Half of my strength is recovered. I will be able to get rid of the worms from the others a little faster now—you have defeated Mandagar. I assume that you are going to destroy the convergence ritual?”

Robzek had many questions that he wanted to ask Joshua. Like, was it his strength or his Divinity that was releasing some sort of unpleasant presence? But it was not the time to ask all that. Their main mission was to destroy the Abyssal Rift after all. But first, they would have to destroy the convergence ritual first before they destroy the Abyssal Rift.

“There is no need for that, in fact, the moment when Mandagar died, the convergence ritual came to an end.” Joshua shook his head and turned towards the blood sea. Then he spoke with a tinge of regret, “That Crystalline Abyssal Dragon was the center of the ritual itself. Its body was carrying the presence of the Mycroft Continent, the Evil God Famine and the presence of the Dark Abyss at the same time. That was the reason why it was able to converge the two worlds into one. And because of that very same reason, it could also attain the Legendary-tier after it completed the ritual.”

“Its death had put a stop on the ritual. The platform of the ritual and its remains would be destroyed as time passes. We don’t need to waste our energy to destroy that.’

In fact, if the warrior’s Divinity did not burst out like it did a while ago, Mandagar could have become strong enough to suppress Joshua as it could have made another Chaos rune. Both their strengths level was the same. The main reason why the warrior overpowered Mandagar was because Mandagar had to split his attention into controlling the ritual and fighting Joshua in a melee combat, which it was not familiar of. Furthermore, it needed to protect the Chaos Runes from being destroyed by the warriors. All of the reasons had put Mandagar at an unfair disadvantage, making it look much weaker than it was.

If the two of them had fought in the void of the blood moon, the Crystalline Abyssal Dragon could have used its speed to its advantage by launching all of its Magic attacks at the warrior who did not have any ground to support his movements. The warrior would never stand a chance to touch it and it could slowly kill the warrior with its constant Magic attacks.

However, Mandagar was still killed. Even its soul was devoured. Joshua had won the battle.

“Is that right?” The holy knight looked at the blood sea, a little shocked. Initially, he thought that the ritual was actually its core. The core that should be hidden deep in the blood moon. However, he had never expected to find out that the Crystalline Abyssal Dragon was in fact the basic foundation of the ritual ground itself. Robzek smiled in relief. “It seems that our mission is almost complete. We can move on to destroy the Abyssal Rift as soon as we can and contact the church to teleport us back.”

However, Joshua shook his head to disagree with the plan. He gestured the holy knight to look at the border of the Dark Abyss’s plane. “I’m afraid that things will not be that simple.”

Robzek turned towards the direction to see what the warrior was talking about. The Supreme-tier holy knight noticed the rapid and frequent fluctuation of the dimensional space—because of the interference caused by the parasitic worm in his head, Robzek was not able to notice anything else at all.

The holy knight inhaled deeply and said, “What is that? Is that the invasion of the Demonic Legion?!”

Joshua corrected Robzek, “Abyssal dragons, not demons.”

“That’s even worse!”

The moment after he said that, the holy knight frowned. “Judging from that speed, they will be able to penetrate the invisible barrier of the plane within twenty to thirty minutes top. They will be arriving at this level of the Dark Abyss after that… Even if we go on and destroy the Abyssal Rift now, we’ll need quite a long time to teleport back to our world.”

This time, it was Joshua’s turn to frown. “Long time? My floating war rig Galecould have performed a haul teleportation within a few minutes.”

“Although I have no idea what you are talking about, we are going to perform a teleportation across the plane.”

Robzek walked up to Saya and reached out his hand. He then placed it on the forehead of the great nun. Even though Saya was still unconscious at the moment, her expression suggested that she was not in pain anymore. Instead, she seemed a little sad. As the closest person to Nolan in daily life, it seemed that Nolan’s betrayal had affected her the most.

The holy knight was explaining to the warrior while casting the parasitic worm from the great nun’s head, “After we detonate the abyssal rift, any connection to the Mycroft Continent will be severed. This world will be completely disconnected from Mycroft. The church will be using the dimensional rune that’s been carved in the main hall of the Epoch —which is also the place where you came from—to reverse a ritual and summon us back to the Mycroft Continent. The process is long. It will probably take half an hour to complete.”

“Initially.” Robzek looked at the situation on the blood moon plane. Then he shook his head and said, “We thought that this plane was an ordinary plane of the Dark Abyss. There would only be lands and demons. After pushing into the end of the Dark Abyss and detonating the abyssal rift, we would only need to defend ourselves against the demons for about half an hour before we get to go back to our world. But who would have thought that the situation would change.”

The ritual and plan of the Crystalline Abyssal Dragon, even the size of the Dark Abyss were already beyond their expectations. As the plane was just a fragment of an entire continent, the entire blood moon was not as vast as the land in the distant south. As the distance between the border of the plane where the Abyssal Dragons come from and the blood moon was just a little further than the distance between the abyssal rift and the blood moon, it would not take long before the enemies would arrive.

As they were discussing, Saya slowly regained her conscious. When she came to her senses, she noticed that the holy knight casting the parasitic worm out of her head. So, the great nun immediately joined him. As the two of them worked together on the task, it took just a few seconds before the parasitic worm was reduced to dust.

With the two of them working together to remove parasitic worms from the other members on the Epoch, the holy knight and the great nun were able to swiftly wake Roland. The three members of the church worked together and used only about five minutes before they woke everyone on the ark. They were all relieved from the torment of the parasitic worms in their brains—however, the crews in the cabin were still unconscious. Due to the urgency of the current circumstance, there was no time to save them first.

“We are currently in an extremely perilous situation.”

Resting his hand on the weak black draconic girl’s head, Joshua spoke to everyone seriously, “A couple of minutes later, the Abyssal Dragons will arrive at this very plane. So we have three options.”

“What are the three options?” Funa asked. She calmly continued, “Let’s be clear, we shall not discuss options where we will end up dead for sure. Avoid the unpleasant topic.”

“The first option. We will leave the plane of the blood moon by sailing away on the Epoch first. Then we shall detonate the Wheel of Holy Light on the other side of the abyssal rift on the Mycroft Continent. That will only seal the rift temporarily. Although the seal will not be stable, we shall be safe. We can always get back to finish the job in the future when we get the chance again.”

Joshua was straightforward and on the point. “The second option. We will make our move immediately and destroy the dimensional rift completely on this side of the world. However, we will be facing the Abyssal Dragons and we will have to survive for over half an hour if the Abyssal Dragons do not interrupt our teleportation progress before we can actually get back to our world.”

“Truth to be told, other than Robzek and I, the second option would only end up killing half the people onboard. And that’s an optimistic estimation.”

“What about the final option?” Roland was the one who voiced his concern. He rubbed his head. Although the brain-eating words had been suppressed in time as they were cast out of their brains before they could do some real damage to their brains, part of their brains had sustained damage. The blond-haired holy knight seemed very uncomfortable. “We’ll all end up dead if we choose the second option. So I want to hear the third option.”

“The last one is a little risky though.”

The warrior spoke softly and lifted his head. He looked towards the Nuclear Star above the ark. He calmly said, “Furthermore, it will cost us a lot of money.”

After he finished speaking, Joshua lowered his head and looked at Robzek who seemed to be in deep thoughts. “The third option. The three of you will be using the Wheel of Holy Light to destroy the abyssal rift while I shall use the Nuclear Star to interrupt the teleportation of the enemy—if we are lucky enough, we will be able to last until the summoning ritual of the church is completed before the arrival of the Abyssal Dragons through teleportation. They will not be able to reach us before we leave.”

As a treasure fully filled with positive energy, a fragment of the sun, an outburst of energy from the Nuclear Star would definitely surpass the power inside the Wheel of Holy Light. If that power was used correctly, it could definitely be able to interrupt the teleportation of the Abyssal Dragons. Joshua believed that the last option was a very good choice. He was very keen to try it out.

“No, Master.” Black immediately rejected that option. She looked at the warrior anxiously. “That’s too dangerous. You’ll… die…”

The black draconic girl carelessly bit her own tongue. She immediately yelped in pain as she closed her mouth with both of her hands to stop her voice and the flames from gushing out of her mouth. But she continued staring at Joshua with her golden eyes, pleading her master not to do it.

Anyone knew the danger of choosing the option to destroy the Abyssal Rift and interrupt the teleportation of the Abyssal Dragons. The warrior would definitely be shredded into pieces by the raging Abyssal Dragons if he made a little error—there would at least be ten thousand Abyssal Dragons arriving. Even a Legendary-tier champion would find it difficult to handle. Let alone a warrior who was obviously not in a good state at the moment.

Saya instantly shook her head to express her objection. “If that was the case, we shall pick the first option. We shall return to the Mycroft Continent as soon as we can and destroy the dimensional rift. Even if there is any complication later, we would have completed half of our mission. We will get another chance to finish our mission in the days to come.”

The great nun had never agreed to meaningless sacrifices. From her point of view, the last option was in fact much more perilous than the second option. It was more of a fantasy to begin with.

The blue draconic lady, Hill, and Roland were also unconvinced by the third option. It was not because they fear death. It was because the possibility of succeeding was too low. They would rather go for the second option. They rather face the Abyssal Dragons with each other than tasking the warrior to interrupt the Dimensional Teleportation of the dragons with the Nuclear Star. They were not so thick-skinned to let Joshua bear the danger all alone.

Robzek suddenly turned serious.

As another fellow Supreme-tier champion, he was different from Saya, Roland and the others who were Gold-tier beings. The silver-haired holy knight had witnessed Joshua’s power while he was battling Mandagar. The warrior was obviously confident that he could get the job done when he proposed the third option. Furthermore, the warrior had the experience in destroying a dimensional door. Perhaps the option did not seem as hard as others thought it to be.

Robzek turned his head to the side and looked Joshua in the eye. When the holy knight look into the red eyes of the warrior, he could feel the warrior’s determination to make sure that the task was completed.

—Perhaps it is an option worth trying.

With that, Robzek made up his mind.

“Saya, go to Nolan’s alchemy lab and bring the Wheel of Holy Light.”

Shutting his eyes for a little while, the holy knight spoke deeply, “Roland, get to the main hall and contact the church. Get them ready to begin the summoning ritual now.”

“Captain!” Saya was misled to believe that Robzek had chosen the second choice. Just as she was ready to inform Roland who was currently contacting the church at the main hall, she overheard Robzek’s last words to the warrior. She immediately turned around and spoke angrily, “What are you—”

He was not afraid of death at all. Death in the battle with demons and Chaos had always been the final fate of the holy knights. As long as they could complete the mission, Robzek was willing to give up Roland’s life without any regret. However, he would never want to see his own friends dying a meaningless death in a meaningless place like the Plagued Land. His comrades had been slaughtered by the Chaos plague back there.

Saya walked to the lab and took the Wheel of Holy Light with her as she made her way back to the deck. She paused when she overheard her captain conversation with the warrior. Unlike the blue draconic lady and the young elf, she was waiting for Robzek to give her an explanation.

“If the Abyssal Dragons are capable of breaking through the dimensional barrier between the planes of the Dark Abyss, it is natural that they will be able to break through the weaker part of the dimensional barrier between the Dark Abyss and the Mycroft Continent.” The silver-haired holy knight shook his head and did not bother himself with the others’ feelings towards his decision. As he looked at the warrior’s back, he continued to speak with a heavy tone, “The first option has a high possibility of ending up badly. If the enemy forces can truly break through the dimensional rift that’s not completely destroyed and make their way into the Mycroft Continent, we will all be dead. We will never get another chance to complete our mission if that really happens.”

“The second option is extremely dangerous, the third option as well. However, we still have a chance to return to our world, alive.”

He inhaled deeply and spoke with a sigh, “We don’t have much time, and I have faith in Joshua. What about you guys?”

***

—About ten minutes later.

At the border of the plane on the blood moon.

A gigantic dimensional rift slowly tore open. Abyssal Dragons were about to enter this world.

Joshua grabbed tightly onto the Nuclear Star in his hands as he stayed floating in midair.

He could hear the sound of the abyssal rift being detonated by the Wheel of Holy Light as the rift distorted before it vanished without a trace. He could hear the sound of the explosion loud and clear from afar.

The traitor had died. The abyssal door of the future had also been completely shut off.

The power that resembled the sun was held by the warrior as it continuously releasing hot airflow. The warrior smiled as he held that hot gemstone while driving the energy force within it.

History, fate, everything would change completely after this. A new world would be born, and a whole new future awaited.

The violent winds howled loudly.

That sound filled the warrior with determination.