Soul of Searing Steel

The tides of flesh that the Pestilence minions formed dove toward Joshua and Nostradamus, violent energy ripples turned undulations striking where the pair were.

Hundreds and thousands of superior aberrations set off energy waves that engulfed the Void, its power sufficient to crumple the toughest of warships into twisted dough or a small metal planet into a pancake. A human’s body of flesh and blood would certainly be instantly crushed into an ultra-thin paper formed from organic materials, becoming dust within the vacuum that wafts everywhere.

But neither one of the Legendary champions present had bodies of flesh and blood. That was why both Nostradamus and Joshua did not evade, with the warrior even stopping and turning towards the tides of Chaos that poured menacingly at him, before stretching his four arms.

“Here it is!”

The Steel Halo appeared behind Joshua and whirled rapidly, gathering endless ionized energies and matter particles amidst the universe and instilling it all into the warrior’s furnace. Immeasurably powerful liquid energy hence streamed from the Core out to his four arms—in the very next moment, four immeasurably robust and focused energy beams were unleashed, cutting into one of the superior aberrations. The beam that was several kilometers long was brandished for but a second, and immeasurable energy shields were penetrated, with the aberration in the lead diced into pieces.

Even so, losing one was nothing much—not even cannon fodder—towards the swarm of Chaos that was igniting their life essence and undergoing temporary fusion. In a quarter of a second, more than a few superior aberrations began to weave out of what was left of the first one, and charged violently at Joshua.

And what greeted them was the extradimensional nuclear heavy punch that the two combined to unleash once more.

Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom! As if it all happened in a single second, gigantic craters that had to be counted by units of a hundred meters appeared over the bodies of five superior aberrations that had been leading the onslaught, leaving dark green blood and grounded meat that dispersed across space as luminous psionic shields were shattered. The iron-skin, muscle, nerves and all manners of unnamable tumorous constructs within the aberrations were all incinerated into nothingness under million-degrees heat, while scarlet flames kept burning in their bodies as if gangrene in the bone.

Joshua never stopped punching out just as the elderly mage never stopped aiding him. Just now, the warrior did not punch out more than five times—in fact, in a dozen seconds before, his four arms had gone back and forth from the mage’s portal for almost ten thousand times like streaks of golden-red lightning, bombarding Void aberrations or Void Mother tentacle. To the Midgardians in the Sea God Star Fortress, however, it was as if something that happened in an integrated instant after time had seemingly stopped.

Poof—

Soon, it was as if space itself was drowned in green blood, with more than half of the dozens of Colossal Void aberrations and Thousand-Meter class monsters dead. Although their broken bodies or corpses were bursting out with huge clusters of viscous blood, the blood was also vaporized by Joshua’s extreme heat, shifting into beautiful but threatening illusory forms that resembled star clouds.

With those consecutive quick jabs, Joshua had already struck down every Pestilence minion that dared to approach him—and it was not as if there were not any Void aberrations that were still coming, but it took time to reach them.

“Now, Nostradamus!”

Taking full opportunity of their cleared surroundings, Joshua quickly called out the old mage’s name from within their spiritual link. Without once pausing for thought, the eyes of the pale blue human figure shone with two rays as if waterfalls, looking around space for their target.

And in seconds, Nostradamus found a suitable one.

“Found it, Joshua!” The elderly mage briskly replied, and raised both his hands. Waves of dimensional creases appeared over them, running in circles as if intending to tear space apart and pull something from a distant place.

“Cover me!” He said rather laboriously. “I need time to usher it!”

At the moment, the pair were pausing where they were. Some of the Void aberrations and the Void Mother itself which were hot on their trails had actually gone some distance off course, and were now turning hurriedly to continue their chase.

In that very moment, the old mage was guiding something towards their position, leaving Joshua to face the curling waves of aberrations—though he did not have the long-range strike ability and Void Resonance buff, the warrior’s expression had nary a change. Drawing a deep breath, the vital joints over his body such as his elbows, back, shoulders, and soles ejected a total of ten golden energy jets of flame with the utmost intensity. If it had been within an atmosphere, the speed at which the jets shot out would cause sharp supersonic noises capable of killing lifeforms over several kilometers away, but right now, it was the momentum pushing Joshua’s forward!

Boom! As if turning to a rocket accelerated to maximum speed with the jet of flames, Joshua dashed at the endless aberrations. Unlike his spiral charge with steel sword and greataxe, the warrior was merely driving forward in a straight line, depending on brute strength without any technique as he crashed towards the legions of aberrations!

In no time at all, as if a golden spark was devoured by black sea water, the spot of light that was Joshua was swallowed by the swarm, not only panicking the Midgardian armies in the faraway Sea God Star Fortress but also causing Nostradamus to throb spiritually even as the old mage cast his spell—Joshua only said that he would be holding off the enemy, not dashing at the opposite direction!

But before any of them could worry for long, the dark tide of aberrations that had caught Joshua suddenly tousled as if some dynamite had detonated within. Countless monster corpses thus splashed away like droplets, sent flying by violent magnitudes and explosions from within the Void. They could not even form a psionic cage in time before being blasted away by the tremendous impact force, and precisely because of that, the vanguard of the aberration legions was thinning visibly, with the center of their encirclement now becoming countless afterimages as an unfathomable number of them simultaneously launching their assault.

“Energy peak level has surpassed grand-scale psionic engines used for cities!”

“Not even the integrated force from dozens of warship self-destruct cores has such power!”

“What the hell happened?! How were the aberrations sent flying?!”

Awestruck and curious voices roused in every single section of the Sea God Fortress where the spectacle was visible. Every Midgardian who saw it were staring blankly or tousling their own heads, gazing at the screens in disbelief.

They had been continuously overvalued the abilities of the two Void beings only to found that the definition of limits which they had set was completely meaningless. They had projected that the combined power of the two reinforcements would not be able to stand against the millions of the Void Swarm, much less the Void Mother. Now, however, it appears that apart from the Void Mother’s slight advantage thanks to its size, the endless ranks of Void aberrations that had been the toughest issue were utterly unthreatening for them, even converted to fuel to recover their energies!

It was then that, from the other end of space and the opposite of the screens, Joshua made another move that left everyone including the Void Mother stunned, apart from the old mage Nostradamus.

“Sword, to me!”

With a sonorous cry in vacuum, Joshua transformed into a raging golden-red ray and instantly arrived beside a superior aberration that was over five-kilometers long. His four arms swiftly combining into two arms that were much larger, more powerful and streaming with silver Steel Strength radiance, grabbing towards the body of the superior abomination, its sturdy psionic gravity shield broken through easily like fermented pastry.

In the next second the Colossal aberration was grabbed, silver radiance spread like Pestilence virus and spread over the body of the minion, with layers of metallic luster enshrouding its body as its body began to transform brutally!

Graaawr—

The disc-shaped superior aberration that was fused from a dozen Colossal-aberrations itself and was more than five meters long started to spray out virtually limitless green fog of blood from all over its body, its anguished cries emanating from within. Even as the screams of absolute despair continued, its form changed rapidly like plasticine and, in accordance to Joshua’s will, was compressed into a kilometer-class colossal weapon that one could not tell if it were axe or sword!

A genuine weapon of mass destruction!

Thanks to the new technique learned from the Balrog Syndicate, the body of the Pestilence minion was equally fine! Joshua laughed heartily in the middle of space brimming with the blood of Evil God minions, his expression even more savage under the rain of blood. He then raised the giant ship-slasher sword that was over a hundred times larger than his Giant God form, and began to whirl viciously even as the Midgardians, Nostradamus, the Void Monster and Void Mother looked on in shock and terror!

True Whirlwind Slash

“How the fuck is that a whirlwind slash?!” Nostradamus could not help but curse as Joshua announced the name of his technique in their spiritual link and despite most of his attention placed over his guiding spell. “Even the super typhoons that raged over the Eastern Seas are not that dramatic!

He could clearly see at the center of the distant battlefield that the tens of thousands of Void aberrations were running away as if escaping hell, rampantly distancing themselves from the gigantic vortex formed as Joshua whirled his super sword. Despite their efforts, a powerful magnetic force drew them all into that fearsome meat grinder, and in moments, dozens of kilometers of space in its vicinity were cleared and a huge portion of the monster tides was purged. The violent energy ripples even incessantly sprayed away green clusters of blood fog, churning the entire Void!

If all these had happened in a coastal area on a planet’s surface, it was capable of building giant typhoon that stormed across the entire ocean. The destruction it could cause would be far worse than natural calamities, and it was a mere trifle for the blow to sink a few large islands.

Now, even the Void Mother was forced to order the swarm to retreat—they were ultimately its creations by using its living resources, sending all of them to their deaths without reason was a complete race of resources. Even for a creature of no intelligence such as it, it could determine that sending out paws at Joshua was meaningless, and to some extent giving it weapons.

—*******!!!

Series of erratic codes flashing through its mental faculty like a series of erroneous programs, the Void Mother at present could not tell what mood or frustration it was feeling at the moment, but it just knew that it must act on its own to threaten those two minuscule superior beings. Soon, the ever-present Void swarm no longer clustered into dark tides, spreading in all directions of the planetary system instead, becoming little starry specks strewn across space.

“Damn it!”

In the Sea God Star Fortress, Midgardian facial expressions changed radically. No longer able to sit idly by, the three Commanders rose and leveled their anxious gazes at each other but were at a loss of what to say at once, able only to assign their respective fleets for cleaning missions even as they paced around within the meeting room.

The Void aberrations must not be allowed to spread within the system’s core! It’s a threat that was next to their Mother Planet being invaded!

Though the Midgardians could tell that the Void aberrations did not have the ability to reproduce or split themselves, they were in fact living weapons created by the Void Mother—who knows if they carried part of the Void Mother’s own flesh? If that was the case, they would not really be vanquishing their enemy even if they defeated the Void Mother!

Even so, the matter of whether they could destroy it was no longer a problem for the fleets to consider—if they could not even destroy the organic matter of pawns created by the Void Mother, what was there to even think about? Only a victorious future should be drawn into projections.

Nevertheless, neither Joshua nor Nostradamus lost their composure over the sight. The only thing worth being alert and watchful for the two Legends at the moment was the Void Mother—the monster that never once revealed its full power or its trump card it had used in the other colony!

“Ha!”

Joshua quickly stopped whirling as he saw that the surrounding aberrations had more or less retreated since he could not kill much more even if he kept on whirling. The moment he stopped, he aimed the shrunken corpse of the now completely dead superior aberration sword like a shot put and threw it with full power!

And how powerful Joshua was at the moment? As his Nuclear Heart worked at full capacity, even he did not know where the limit of his power was. Still, whatever the case may be, the greatsword form of a superior body that had as much mass as a small asteroid, brandished with a power that came from nuclear fusion and a body that was over a million tons—when the weapon was aimed true, it was at minimum a ‘combat-class’ superweapon!

Moreover, it was far from a minimum attack!

Boom—!

After a brief but rapid reverberation, the space that was filled with the bloody vapor of aberrations quaked once. A visible but faint gargantuan silver object hence vanished into the vacuum of the universe at a supreme speed of a thousand kilometer per second. Even Nostradamus felt that his eyes blurred for a moment when the weapon of mass destruction left Joshua’s hand, much less the faraway Midgardians in the Sea God Star Fortress. They had collected next to none data before realizing that the warrior had already launched his attack, a speed that surpassed the limits of their sensors’ capacity.

Further away, when that colossal aberration corpse tore the dark universe in two and struck the Void Mother’s shield as if teleporting through indeterminable space, the Midgardians’ sensor completely exploded, their countless screens distorting before vanishing.

Due to the magnitude of the bursting energy, psionic particles were stirred and disturbing all sub-space communications that should not be affected by the physical universe.

And from their positions in space, Joshua and Nostradamus could see that a supernova appeared over the Void Mother’s shield. The several kilometer-thick psionic barriers hence shattered, with six out of eight thousand defensive construct layers penetrated. The fearsome shockwave even vibrated other parts of the shield like oceanic tides, the monumental impacts spreading from the spot where the aberration corpse hit across all directions in space, shaping into a majestic circle of energy.

The aberration corpse that was strengthened by Steel Strength was turned into ash in its collision with the Void Mother and dispersed as the most fundamental of matter particles. On the other hand, the Void Mother’s shield began to flicker like a lightbulb with a dysfunctional conductor—while it was visible that it had not been pierce, it was significantly weakened. The Void Mother itself had paused as well; more than half of its ruby-like crystal veins over its body were broken.

Those were precisely the organs in which the Void Mother used to maintain its shield. They were now heavily damaged.

“I’m out of energy.”

Stopping where he was, Joshua reverted from his twin-arm fusion form to his four-armed giant form. There was only a little radiance left at the golden vortex before his chest. The warrior therefore activated the spiral absorption cyclone that collected all matter around him to refill his tinder even as he spoke feebly again into the spiritual link. “I’m taking a break. You’re up, Master Nostradamus.”

“Alright. Have some rest.”

Having mustered his power for some time, Nostradamus who had finally completed the spell in his hand guffawed in return. He looked confidently at the Void Mother whose shield had dulled considerably, his own eye glinting in pale-blue radiance. “It’s my turn now!”

At those words, a sheet of blue flash shone over the old mage’s raised hands. The flash cut a straight line over the Void, cutting open a giant dimensional rift that was over dozens of kilometers long that rapidly expanded until it shaped into deep and extended vortex portal. In the next second, a giant pointed asteroid that was over a dozen kilometers long rushed towards the stagnated Void Mother some distance away at a speed that quaked even the portal and as if it was about to crumble!

[Star of Nostradamus]!

From the data about the Beam System Nostradamus and Joshua had recently attained from the Mother Tree in the home planet of the Midgardians, there was a long asteroid belt that wrapped around the entire orbit of the system, and was perhaps a remnant left behind when a giant asteroid flew in from other systems and later shattered.

There were many materials suitable for weapons in the asteroids belt. With the power of a Legendary mage, Nostradamus was enough to draw their arrival from the other end of space to bombard the Void Mother, but their initial speed was not enough and hence their destructiveness insufficient. That was why the old mage needed time to use his power and guide the small asteroids from another side of space, and keep accelerating it without stopping by borrowing the gravity from other celestial bodies and the sun until it reaches the degree where it could hurt the Void Mother’s shield. It was time-consuming, which was why it could only be done if Joshua blocked the other Void aberrations.

And now that Joshua had finished his task perfectly—or perhaps even more than that—while weakening the Void Mother’s shields and keeping it stationary, the apocalyptic blow that had been prepared for some time would definitely maim it!

Thus, the asteroid accelerated to 0.00035 the speed of light clearly struck the Void Mother’s shield directly without any fanciful pattern, illuminating the entire planetary system with white light.

A sound immediately followed—the sound of something ‘shattering’ which could be sensed distinctly in the universe.

Whoosh—Booooooom!!!!!

Vacuum could not conduct sound, but the immense energy signature exceeded all soundwaves. The multitude of aberration corpses and blood vapor spread throughout the Void were all blown away with the violent impact and a powerful light that far exceeded the sun’s, while explosions that shook the world and quaked planets illuminated the darkness of space without stopping, shaping into circular energy realms. Both Joshua and Nostradamus had to stay on their toes to keep themselves anchored not be sent flying under the forceful aftershock, much less those Void aberrations that could not leave in time.

In seconds, Joshua and Nostradamus who had stabilized themselves looked at once towards the Void Mother as the collision caused light to dull.

An unbelievably wretched sight of the universe lay before their eyes.

The stalwart shield of the Void Mother was completely torn apart, with innumerable gruesome wounds slit across its mammoth true form. One could clearly make out the shattered psionic shield crystals and dark-green tumor constructs filling its wounds, while green blood was ejecting out tidal waves in the gravity-less vacuum, becoming large green spheres. Even further away were a great number of torn meat pieces, wafting away towards the depths of the Void after having lost all liveliness.

The spot in which the Void Mother welcomed the asteroid strike was completely destroyed, with a great chunk of its flesh being cut away. Hundreds of kilometers of what had been its sturdy physicality were incinerated into nothingness by searing heat, an effect that surprised even both Joshua and Nostradamus. They could not help but clench their fists; they were witnessing the violence that could wipe away a civilization.

And that violence precisely came from their hand.

Through favorable surroundings and the social conditions gifted by Psionic Soar, the two Legendary champions had dealt a genuine injury on the Void Mother.

Nevertheless, the blow was unquestionably super-effective albeit lacking if their intent was to kill the Void Mother—waves of dark malevolent fury poured forth from the Void Mother’s body, promptly enshrouding the behemoth again with green psionic energies that were so thick it was almost black. It was extremely unstable as well as certainly incapable of forming an actual defense, for fury was a direct conflict against the ‘calm’ that psionic energies emphasized. However, the Void Mother unreasonably forced those unstable energies into a temporary defensive shield.

Beneath the black psionic layer that was faintly discernible, the Void Mother’s maimed parts were clearly regenerating rapidly—the price for it being contracting from its near million-meter body. As clusters of tumorous formations regrew and its reproductive tracts reconstructed themselves, the Void Mother was now one fourth its original size. Blankets of creased, dark green tissues also started to pour over its wounds, while in the distance, the incalculable legions of aberrations began to stream back to it—they were summoned by their Mother Body to become ingredients for its recuperation.

At the same time, without waiting for the ensuing blow from Joshua and Nostradamus as they recovered some of their power, the colossal Void monster briskly turned on the spot, locked on to a single direction and darted away speedily with psionic energies. The decisive and direct move left neither warrior nor mage with any time to react, and it was a second after the Void Mother had shot out streaks of tremendous psionic rays to push itself away that Nostradamus’s expression changed drastically.

“Damn it! The Void Mother is making for an asteroid belt!” He exclaimed loudly into the spiritual link. “The Midgardians’ Sea God Fortress is just a little further!”

“Don’t let it have its way!” Joshua’s expression darkened as well. “Who knows how long the fight would last if it recovers! With the rich resources in the core of the system, it would not be unusual for us to fight in an attritional battle that would last for years!”

Thus, the old mage once again pulled the warrior into an emergency warp in pursuit of the accelerating Void Mother.