Soul of Searing Steel

The greatsword in Joshua’s vanished, just as Fattrovi’s body did. The warrior then looked above, at the rift upon the zenith of the world. It was the dimensional fault connected to the World Inner: His battle against the Ruler of Time had shattered the barrier, connecting the Celestial Hall to the real world.

At present, pale blue soul energies were wafting like snowflakes from the skies all over, melting. All life watched as those starry lights descended, with time seemingly freezing there.

Fattrovi was dead; his life was ended.

But before that, his own soul had almost been incinerated by himself, and the will of the Time Turner now dispersed as pure spiritual fragments over all directions. However, Joshua did not collect those broken shards like he did after destroying the Demon General Helm, instead turning toward the spatial rift on the other side and spoke with a slightly raised voice, “Return, Python of Steel. The Usurper has fallen—come back to your world.”

Though his voice was not loud, it was distinctly transmitted into the Void. At those words, a silver silhouette hence descended upon Simboa, and upon its arrival into the world that was filled with spatial rifts, all things began to move as if gaining a mainstay. Dilapidated outer space began to seal itself, broken rifts recombining while the Celestial Hall, linked to reality, gradually lowered and finally sunk beneath the earth, once again isolated from the world.

( NovelFull )    At the same time, the spirit of the Steel Python Karlis linked itself to Joshua again.

“This mission had been too dangerous…” it said, its voice at once carrying guilt and wonder. “I never imagined that the task from a small world could involve a champion who could usurp a world’s Authority. It is my fault for not ascertaining things before hand, please forgive my remiss.”

“There’s no right or wrong here—I’ve not been vigilant either.”

Joshua replied serenely in the spiritual realm with the World Will. “Fattrovi’s very existence is an exception amongst exceptions. If not for the extremely unique environment of the Void Vortex, there would not have been a man such as him born in Simboa.”

At those words, he lowered his head and stared at the spiritual fragments before him: More than a thousand years ago, at a certain small nation in this center of the world that was beneath the rule of the World Government, Fattrovi had lived through his childhood and attained Ultra-powers. At the time, he was yet to obsess over the death of his younger sister and the passing of his parents, and held a chest full of hope as he stood upon his homeland, expectant of the future and considering his later life. But when he stood here once more, the Simboans had wrought self-ruin, becoming the wordless Time Turner who judged the sins of his own kind. It was then that Fattrovi no longer hold expectations toward the future, and exhausted all efforts in sprinting toward the past.

What did Fattrovi do wrong? He had sufficient reason to exact vengeance upon the World Government and the world: it was civil strife amongst Simboans— right and wrong did not come into the equation. What was more, he stopped the war of Ultra-powers that could destroy the world, anchored the world’s coordinates. From a certain point of view, he was a genuine savior who had rescued the world.

But he was still wrong. He allowed his hate to fester up to the boundless future, using countless innocent Simboans as livestock, tormenting and farming them while harvesting their souls. He killed billions, forging the Soul Stars and making a toy of civilization and Order for himself. Still, there was a logic that the strong could dominate over everything there is about the weak, that the Simboans deserved to be treated as such subhuman that even their progenies were farmed and enslaved, it was in turn unavoidable that the said strong was destroyed when it met a higher power.

It was no question of right and wrong: evil would be punished, the strong would be defeated by the stronger, as all things should be.

“There is no natural affinity between Orders. Just as believers hated non-believers or members of other faith, Order does not hate Chaos the most, but other aberrant Order.”

Joshua muttered, his body remaining laden with wounds and had yet healed himself. He extended his hand and picked up the largest piece of Fattrovi’s spiritual fragments that were diminishing without stopping, observing the radiance inside carefully.

Curiously, when Joshua picked it up, every shard stopped diminishing. The warrior held the purest and most crystalline gemlike fragment before his own eyes, nodding slightly.

( NovelFull )    Joshua stood with the Steel Python Karlis in front of the Spiral Tower and threw it at the quiet Soul Puppet girl in a corner, prompting her to gasp in surprise. Then, folding his arms across his chest, his body naturally rose twenty thousand meters into the air and looked down upon the entire world of Simboa.

“What would you do now?” Karlis asked. “You had used the souls collected by the Usurper to reignite the world’s Flame, form a cycle of Order. Even if you leave them alone, those people and the self-aware Soul Puppets would naturally flourish, and Simboa would take care of them.”

“Let’s anchor the world coordinates so that Simboa returned to its original position and move along the Void Vortex.”

Joshua gazed upon the little continent where countless battle and slaughter ignited, just as there were countless emotions, unions, and parting. It birthed a god, and yet the god rejected that power: Fattrovi did not ascend as a deity, using the Observer System to enslave the power of divinity, producing miracles that could distort the past and reverse time.

“Simboa had left this world for too long,” Joshua added calmly. “And with Fattrovi thousand-years of alterations, it might not get on top of things so quickly. However, that matter is quite simple for me—I’ve determined various parameters before entering the world, and after the hundreds of battles in the World Inner, I’m sure of the inner construct of the world. It wouldn’t trouble me.”

At that, a rift directed to the World Inner split before him, and he strode inside with self-assurance.

***

The heart of the Void Vortex, beyond the world.

It was a quiet, deathly and vast dimensional region with nary a ripple. Like the eye of a typhoon, this was the only place considered safe—celestial bodies emanating extraordinary radiance hung at its center, whirling in isolation and calm.

It was the only world inside the entire Void Vortex, the world of Simboa.

But now, that world was slowly moving toward the walls around the eye, as if attracted by the tremendous energies of the Vortex. A few hours more and the world would not be able to escape following into the area pulled by the Vortex, sinking in and shattered utterly.

From the grand perspective of the Multiverse, the Void Vortex does move. The Great Mana Tide which cascaded from the center of the Multiverse itself pushed the Void Vortex toward the edge of the Multiverse, and there would be one day where the assemblage of turbulent energies would slowly stop at some corner in the Multiverse, forming huge clusters of Steel nebulas, and as it should be, the heart of the Void would move as well. Simboa should have been devoured by the Vortex a thousand years ago, but Fattrovi had calculated the trail of the Vortex and did his best to keep Simboa at the safe center all along.

But now, with a pale flash, Simboa was slowly pausing its movements toward the walls, like a star-faring vessel dropping its anchor. It then stopped entirely, as if the person navigating the vessel was calculating the coordinates of the world itself and the entire Void Vortex, and soon, the vessel moved again—toward the opposite direction.

Like the rise and fall of oceanic waves or the sun and moons, everything happened as it should be. Simboa returned to a safe position once again, moving according to its original trail.

***

The Celestial Hall, the World Inner.

“Fattrovi didn’t destroy data regarding the original orbit—it saved considerable time.”

Replacing Simboa and temporarily assuming the Throne of World Authority, Joshua controlled the world with his aid, slowly shifting it. The substantial reference materials Fattrovi left behind unquestionably saved them two hours of estimated super-processing, impeccably solving the task that would have exerted immense pressure. Joshua briskly left the Throne when it was done, and turned toward the Steel Python Simboa, who had not said a thing yet. “So, how are you going to treat it… and them?”

‘It’ naturally referred to Simboa, the world itself.

As for ‘them’, Joshua referred to all life upon the world, primarily the Simboans, and the Soul Puppets.

“I shall lead them to rebuild civilization.”

Simboa nodded heavily at Joshua, having obtaining a physical form and becoming a Steel Python once again. It stared at the edge of the World Inner with a complicated expression, where the once opaque Dimensional Barriers were now transparent, and the entire continent of Simboa could be seen clearly. “Everything falls within my duty… If I had awakened and guided the Simboans when the Void Vortex formed and the Ultra-powers flooded them, the conflict would not have regressed to such a state.

“…It’s great that you have the intention.”

Joshua nodded slightly, having become rather exhausted inwardly following the battle against Fattrovi. While he did not have a fine opinion of the absent-minded World Will, it had clearly changed, and the warrior certainly would not try to crumple its proactiveness now that it showed it. It was then that he remembered something, and frowned. “Come to think of it. Simboa, did you really not witness the Void Vortex forming?”

“No,” the Steel Python shook its head. “I have slumbered for millennia, only to awaken when I was banished.”

“Is that so.”

Joshua could not help being a little disappointed—before this, the Steel Python had been too much of a sloth and did not care for anything. It did not even know or hold a clue toward a monumental event that clearly involved the destruction of over a thousand worlds.

It was then that the Steel Python suddenly spoke.

“But,” Simboa said, puzzled, its colossal serpentine head swaying beneath the Vault of Stars as if having remembered something. “I still remembered that there were actually many worlds and Steel Pythons around me before, and there was no lack of powerful ones.”

Steel Pythons existed only in worlds with intelligent beings, and a civilization of Order. The stronger the Order, the greater the civilization, the more powerful the Steel Python would be.

Joshua thought about Simboa’s words, but found nothing out of the ordinary. The Void Vortex occupied such vast dimensional region that it would not be unusual that multiple civilizations existed where it was over millennia ago, and it was not rare for several especially powerful civilizations.

But what the Steel Python said next left the warrior speechless.

“Those feel especially powerful Steel Pythons had even formed some Confederation, the races amongst them assembling to build a massive star-faring civilization…”

Simboa reminisced seriously, before elaborating a little tentatively. “They were self-proclaimed ‘Protection of the Weak’, making it their duty to aid other weak civilizations and inviting them to join their cause… Simboans appeared to have been surveyed before, but were concluded to have a stable civilization and did not need protection. They would wait until they obtained Void-faring technology before extending an invitation.”

“Right, they called themselves ‘Shelter’,” the Steel Python appeared ill at ease even as it spoke. “That’s all I remembered from so many years ago.”

“…That’s a lot.”

Joshua replied with somber gaze and a low voice. “That information was very important.”

Then, ignoring Karlis’s questions, Joshua delved into his own thoughts.

There was no question that, like what Joshua had guessed when he saw the ‘Black Fog’, the homeworld of the powerful star-faring civilization known as Shelter was nearby! A former ally and competitor of Mycroft’s civilization a thousand years ago, it had been position in a certain location where the Void Vortex now covered, the proximity hence precisely why the Black Fog came to absorb energies!

“More than a thousand years ago… it was around the period when the Evil Gods invaded and various realms were visited. Could it be that the battle between the Shelter civilization and Evil Gods had led to the destruction of countless worlds, and the subsequent birth of the Void Vortex?”

It was not impossible. As an ally of Mycroft, Shelter’s top-notch combat prowess would be considerable, or they would have simply become a vassal state. Still, the question remained: when Mycroft, the Sage with them, had fought the Evil Gods, there were now a thousand worlds left shattered in the surrounding dimensional regions—so how did Shelter cause that?

“No, that isn’t right. Maybe it is exactly because of the Sage that the damage was not so severe.”

Joshua shook his head, refuting his own question and muttering to himself somberly. “If the champions of Shelter did not have dominating combat ability and could only enter direct battle against the Evil Gods and other factions of Chaos, their wars would last longer and lead to greater carnage, perhaps even engulfing the world over an entire dimensional region.

The battle between champions could end instantly, just at it might not end after centuries. From the outcome, Shelter had certainly defeated, and its core world ‘Shelter Alpha’ had almost fallen into the Abyss. That, however, did not meant that they were beaten one-sidedly—destruction of civilization did not matter to Extraordinary champions, since they did not have to be distracted about having to protect a vulnerability. What was more, the terrible rage and shame would empower them, putting zeal into their actions.

As for the Sage, he could assume the advantage and unleash his unimaginable individual ability to subjugate the Evil Gods, limiting the damage to a minimum. That would not apply for other champions… While it might not have been a truth, it was an inference Joshua could neither refute nor admit—just as how he believed the Great Mana Tide to be formed from countless destroyed worlds at the center of the Multiverse.

“I should be going—almost everything is complete.”

Having ensured that Simboa was moving at the correct orbit and would not be consumed by the Void Vortex, Joshua prepared to leave: he came merely to accomplish the mission he accepted, aiding the Steel Python Simboa reclaiming its throne. Now that the task was complete, he had no reason to stay.

It was not Joshua’s business when it came to Simboans, Soul Puppets or even Fattrovi’s spiritual fragments. They had their own path to walk and their own future to be troubled over—the warrior had removed all obstacles in front of them, and as for whether they would self-destruct or flourish…

He did not care.

Joshua had done enough, having left an Ultra-power legacy to let even those without Ultra-powers cultivate it. With Simboa’s guidance, an Ultra-powered race would no longer see conflict arise between Ultrahumans and non-Ultrahumans. As for problems over the sheer threat of ability, the World Will would deliberately exert suppression —before this, the World Will had slumbered and Steel Authority was not distinct. Now, however, when the Steel Python would act on its own initiative to subjugate exceedingly formidable Ultra-powers, those Ultra-powers would naturally be amicable.

After all, Ultra-powers were simply Steel Particles from other worlds, while the Steel Python commanded complete Authority. Reasonably speaking, Fattrovi had accomplished that, but perhaps he never uncovered that ability, or that he did not forgive the Simboans, or because he was alone and could not exert suppression in every given moment, or maybe he could not control other Ultra-powers since he himself embodied Steel Particles of other worlds… there were simply so many possibilities that who knows what happened.

Joshua refused another Steel Shard that Simboa the Steel Python was prepared to award him again. There would be no meaning in getting more since he already gained a part of its essence, and it might even taint his own Steel Strength. Thus, the warrior left Simboa through the portal the Steel Python deliberately opened, and returned to the Void of the Multiverse.

And the sight of the Void always stirred the heart.

Standing outside Simboa, Joshua looked around the Void Vortex, where endless bizarre lights and abstract auroras flowed within the dazzling storm of energy. It was a mobile and profound beauty that changed incessantly, something no writer, artist or video could capture—a miracle that occurs by a three-hundred and sixty-degree angle. Infinite Steel Particles swirled with the spiraling energies, a truly blinding sight for Joshua’s Steel Vision, and yet he could not help soaking himself within.

But just as Joshua admired the majesty of the Void Vortex, the soul energies Fattrovi collected dispersed in its entirety and descended upon, and the world abruptly changed!

When Joshua noticed the anomaly, a mild light engulfed every inch in the eye of the Void Vortex. Joshua turned in shock, finding the pale-blue radiance that had mixed with a green-purple hue began to radiate into the surrounding Void from the center of Simboa. Like wings of a butterfuly, endless orderly, florid patterns flowed into the Void, and began to extend to the walls of the eye!

“What is going on?”

Unable to determine what was happening at once, Joshua could only mutter and ask Karlis, who was with him. “Do you know what is that?”

“It’s a little familiar… Right, there was something similar happening with Mycroft when the Sage prepared to build the Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds.”

Karlis was utterly astonished as well, appearing to remember an ancient memory as it spoke slowly. “Mycroft was at its peak then, but a golden red light was suddenly unleashed one day, forming a halo-like radioactive energy flow, illuminating the entire dimensional region… it was similar to Simboa, although there is a still a huge difference when it had happened at Mycroft.

While Karlis could not explain what was happening immediately, the anomaly in Simboa did not hold back and began to inch toward the climax. As the butterfly lings that had now extended to the walls of the Void Vortex’s eye, a massive flow of energy immediately flowed along it, surging toward Simboa profoundly.

As infinite energy and lights cascaded, the Void around Simboa was stirred as once. Clouds of energy rolled up unusual suckers and temporary vortex around the world, but those energies could scathe neither Simboa nor its world barriers. Instead, like water absorbed into cotton that vanished instantly, everything was instantly absorbed into Simboa!

“World Ascension!”

It was then that Karlis finally recalled the term, staring in astonishment at the turbulent flow of Void energy before leveling a gaze of envy at the world of Simboa. “Right,” it muttered, “worlds grow. Small worlds could combine to form larger worlds, but if they embodied sufficient depth and every condition was met, it could undergo natural growth into a larger world… Right, it met all conditions!”

Being at the center of the Void Vortex, Simboa met the conditions of ‘multiple Otherworld Steel Strength’ and ‘enriched external energies’. Inside, following Fattrovi’s death, his massive stores of energies overflowed and finally became the patterns that bypassed the World Barrier, allowing the world a natural promotion!

At the moment, Simboa was expanding incessantly. Boundless energies boiled in the Void, finally fertilizing it as incalculable wondrous lights cascading from the depths of the Void Vortex. They were then assimilated, the infinite Steel Particles colliding and fusing, before releasing pure Steel Strength and surging molecular flows that assembled into veins of auroras, which in turn must be calculated in light years. The entire world of Simboa was hence wrapped into a gigantic cocoon inside of which the world enlarged, birthing new continent and ocean.

“Heavens…”

Karlis could not help leaving Joshua at the very sight, itself observing things intricately before exclaiming in awe again. It was not moved by the good fortune of Simboa since itself would have Ascended if nothing unexpected centuries ago—instead, the Steel Python was stirred by the shift of the entire Void Vortex!

The Ascension of Simboa appeared to have fulfilled some other key condition as well. The once chaotically swirling Void Vortex was changing unusually as well—endless stagnated Steel Particles within the immeasurably colossal spiraling nebula, seemingly sensing some signature of Order began to condense and assemble. In one brief instant, the Void Vortex instantly split into thousands of smaller vortices. And though the lesser ones remained part of the Void Vortex, they moved like orbiting planets around its spiraling arms even as they swirled.

All was so sudden and dazzling that the Void Vortex, a monumental destructive whirlpool that enshrouded an entire dimensional region changed appearance drastically. Like an artificial nebula, thousands of silver gigantic eggs were rapidly whirling in each spiral arm, with no more gaps existing between Steel Particles as they gathered naturally to form greater fragment constructs. Tens of thousands of cascading substance flow changed, becoming primeval clouds of worlds that swirled by nature.

“Look, Joshua! We may be witnessing the birth of a world!”

Karlis was immeasurably moved then—it was the birth of a world, a majestic sight Steel Pythons rarely see, or perhaps had never seen! After all, the world was born from nothing beneath the illumination of the Initial Flame. However, things that happened only in the center of the Multiverse—in the land of beginnings where endless worlds crowded—were all young, recently born worlds. In those worlds where mass might not have sedimented, not to mention forming civilizations, none would have seen how those worlds were condensed or born.

And yet, it could witness it by fortune in the Void Vortex! Incalculable particles of Steel Strength, compounding with the substantial energies of the Mana Tide was swirling like the nebulas of creation. Millions of massive condensed Steel Strength constructs formed geometrical forms, sinking—and with Simboa as an example, began to undergo the constant of slowly constructing worlds!

Meanwhile, Karlis did not hear Joshua’s reply as it hurriedly withdrew its overreaching will and returned to the warrior. Nevertheless, the Steel Python saw in astonishment that endless lights and Steel Strength were encircling Joshua’s excessively dense Giant God of Steel form, as if to create another ‘Nebula of Genesis’ around him!

And Joshua certainly could not answer Karlis—he was absorbing, or perhaps resisting from absorbing the substantial Steel Strength gathering toward him from the Void Vortex.

Even so, Joshua was not surprised that the turbulent tides of energy were assembling around him. It was not unusual that his exceedingly profound mass density and pure constitution of Steel Strength would automatically attract energies, but when even more turbulent energies started for him, he promptly realized that things were not looking good!

The energies and Steel Strength proportions were simply too massive! They appear to view Joshua as a new born body of Steel Strength—in other words, the outline of a world. They hence wildly poured energies to shape him into a nebula, but being an ultimately an intelligent being, how could the warrior instantly receive energies that created a world?

Just like how gods could be destroyed by their own excessive divinity, Joshua was now facing a similar situation that was comparable to being supplied with the energies throughout a world, which was more than enough to destroy his individual consciousness. While his Steel Strength might not disintegrate beneath the crash of sparse Steel Strength particles, it would instead become the center of the world—how would it be different from dying then?

That was why Joshua was now resisting the assembling energies, and yet his will begged to differ: Steel Strength was instinctively drawing in any residual energies around hi like a black hole. Shocked, Joshua even realized that a natural accretion disk had appeared around him as energies that could instantly destroy half of Simboa stirred tumultuously, and increased without stopping!

“This power…”

Joshua could not completely stop the phenomenon no matter how he resisted. His Steel Strength was unlike that of other worlds—it was active without equal, having a competitive attitude like its master that kept thirsting for victory over other Steel Strengths. And the ending for such subjugation and battle was to consume other Steel Strength, absorbing wandering energies around him!

Ka-boom-boom-boom-boom —the colossal vortex rumbled, gathering infinite newborn worlds and quaking the Multiverse around, and amidst the rumbling where planets were born, Joshua held on bitterly.

“This power… is my Steel Strength?”

It was the first time Joshua had so thoroughly understood the essence of his own Steel Strength after forming his own body of Steel. At first, he had believed that he had studied it thoroughly and understanding every power contained within, such as high-speed regeneration, augmentation, substance transition and so forth.

But now, he realized the horrifying outcome when his power was pushed to its limits.

“I… might become a being more terrible than Evil Gods,” Joshua mumbled softly and solemnly within the embrace of the Void Vortex’s boundless energy flow. “If I don’t restrain myself and abandon my will, then…”

Then it meant endless augmentation, endless substance transition, endless battle, and evolution.

***

If Joshua chose to surrender his will like a god that meld into the Divine Source, selecting to animate the ‘essence’ to the extreme, his body would become a nightmare that wandered the Multiverse: devouring worlds, dominating all life, an aberration that would become its own one and only as it walked the Multiverse.

Joshua remembered the Evil God of Pestilence, and its original form: the Sublimator Virus. It was no Evil God nor a creation to destroy worlds, and yet it was as frightening as an Evil God and perhaps even more powerful—a true monster, and Order that consumes all.

That was why Joshua would never allow himself to become something similar. Folding his arms across his chest, he stood amidst the Void, resisting the strengthening from all external energies even if it would elevate the limits of his evolution at present.

Certain quotas of external strength would become his aid, but if those powers tried to usurp the owner, they were no longer aid but an enemy of his Self.

Refusing all aid from the external energies, Joshua thus stood at the center where the Void Vortex nebulas raged, watching indifferently as everything unfolded.

A thousand years ago, millions of worlds were destroyed here.

A thousand years later, millions of worlds were reborn here.

Cycle of Order and Chaos never rests, and only a thin line existed between the boundaries of ancient and young. The ancient Void Vortex was now hence transforming into countless nebulas of newborn worlds, a chaos without order wherein order itself gestated.

And good and evil was with a single thought.

Time passed. The expanding world of Simboa slowly stopped shifting just as formless presence of Order did. The Void Vortex, too, slowly ceased its rapid transformation, while the innumerable nebulas stopped swirling.

Perhaps, hundred of thousands of years later, these nebulas that swirled in Steel Strength would truly form the shape of a world.

That, however, was the future.

Feeling the energy tides around his body diminishing, Joshua exhaled.

A cloud of Steel Strength formed around him, even assembling into clusters of flocculent substances. They shattered at his every move, turning into specks of crystals wafting amidst the Void—perhaps to be drawn and assimilated into other nebulas in the future.

It was then that the Steel Python Karlis finally broke through the heavy barriers of energy and returned to Joshua’s body.

“The chain reaction from the World Ascension just now was too great…” It said, seemingly still a tinge worried. “Are you well?”

“I’m alright.”

Joshua lifted his right hand, and a cluster of silver stardust rose in his palm, gathering and forming a little intricate planet, complete with continent, oceans, and winds.

—There is a power. 

It would always intend evils, and yet would always bear fruits of benevolence.

It is part of me.

—I can become calamity and devastation, just as I could choose to refuse. I could save, I could punish, naturally shouldering everything…

Including this power.

Joshua clenched his right hand and crushed the planet. Stardust again, it was absorbed into Joshua’s body as the warrior turned toward Simboa.

All was right with the world. It kept moving at the predetermined course, keeping at the center of the Void Vortex as it slowly whirled.

“Let’s return, Karlis,” Joshua said, “I’m a little tired.”

Aside from the battle in Simboa, Joshua still had many things to do—including the Black Fog, a thousand-year long past and inferences about the Evil Gods.

“Very well.” Karlis replied. The World Will was shocked by everything that happened just now as well, but it also wanted to return, impatient to lead the refugees from Grandia.

Thus, in the very next moment, a golden-red belt of light pierced the entire Void Vortex, leaving a silver trail. It darted through the Multiverse, returning whence it came.

***

The shifting Void Vortex was still rumbling.

Steel Strength was the powerful of creation, the origins of all things, whereas Steel Strength condensation was the Source of worlds, its inexhaustible radiance of energy illuminating the Void so that the whole world could shine brilliantly.

But with a faint distortion, huge sheets of Black Fog suddenly wafted into the Void outside the Void Vortex. The Fog appeared to go with the flow as if they were some anomalous energies blown here by the Great Mana Tide, and yet it was tellingly intelligent through its little movements.

The Black Fog in the lead noticed the change in the Vortex as well as the countless condensing nebulas, and thus paused in ‘shock’. Soon, other densely packed formations of Black Fog arrived, building into a dark river as they piled together while faintly rumbling, seemingly discerning the outcome of the change in front of them.

But in the end, the Black Fogs still slowly came to the edge of the Vortex, siphoning off the rich energies and Steel Particles as they always did.

Everything was the same, as if nothing ever changed.

However, the Ascension of a world and the birth of millions of worlds was definitely nothing easy.

Everything remained not predetermined.

Everything remained vague.

But light flickered in the heart of the Void Vortex. It was the light of a world, akin to a torch.

The hope of light flashed, illuminating the future.

Volume Thirteen, World in a Shell. End.

Part Two of King of Searing Soul—Mana Tide Rising. End.