Soul of Searing Steel

There is serene delight in most intelligent life when they look upon the stars.

Be it nobility or peasantry, rich or poor, all were unordinary smallness when they looked up at the stars. It was vast and grand beyond human vision, for the stars were so eternal that the entire lives of intelligent beings were so brief—all familiar emotions by the body would instantly leave, instilling an incomparable calmness.

Likewise, there would be surging heartthrob in most intelligent life when they look up upon the stars.

As civilization developed and technology progressed, the more intelligent life would explore the stars, the more they would find it profound—it is far greater than the skies, further than space. On the other side of the infinite deep space, it symbolizes the unknown and exploration, the yearning intelligence holds for the afar. One glance, and life would be filled with passion.

However, Roland the Holy Knight was definitely one of ‘most’.

He did not like the stars at all.

Until now, Roland still clearly remembered how his godfather, Igor, Pope of the Seven Gods Church had brought him across the World Barrier to look at the Multiverse’s infinite galaxies in the Void.

At that moment, his heart quivered in fear.

It was so huge, vast and dark… Deeper than the oceanic depths and wider than wastelands, it was hard to imagine such a horrific sight beyond the beautiful, bright world.

Why was that so? Roland had kept thinking about that question at the time, unable to understand why there would be such horrific emptiness beyond the beautiful world. That doubt became even more entrenched when the old pontiff had led him across various worlds to keep the peace where the Evil God of Death had caused unrest. Then, when Joshua sent his prediction and theories about the Multiverse to the people whom he believed to be worth informing, the doubt bloated to the point that Roland could not say it.

Why was the Multiverse like this?

Endless Chaos lurks in darkness, and Evil Gods without a name would come out of nowhere silently. Behind the beautiful light were ever looming, frightening shadows, while sights of even greater despair are hidden in that future of nothingness.

Such stars were too frightening and hopeless.

That was what Roland thought with certainty as the provisional heir of the Pope.

The Seven Gods Church was not a clan faction, and pontiffs were always chosen from the most influential priests—naturally, there were occasional exceptions such as the incumbent pontiff, Pope Igor, a wandering priest without a parish who roamed all reaches of the continent before he became pope. None knew his name in the decades before that conclave where he was chosen, and when he triumphed over all competitions and successfully proved that his understanding of the Holy Light was greater than everyone including the last pontiff, only did people remembered that plain clergy’s name that was marked in the records.

Reasonably speaking, Roland should not have any competitive edge even with his status as the Pope’s godson. He still had to compete against everyone else in the Seven Gods Church without any special treatment from his link to Igor.

Be that as it may, he was different from the godchildren of previous pontiffs.

Roland was simply too powerful.

Having been sent to the Holy Mountain at ten and groomed as a squire, he awakened his depth for Extraordinary powers at eleven to rise up to Iron class, reaching Iron-advanced at thirteen when he learned various aura. At fifteen, he ascended to Silver Radiant Spirit and truly awakened combat aura at eighteen to emerge as an advanced Radiant Spirit. By twenty he perfected the use of living energies, entering Gold-domain by the next year.

From there, Roland only needed five years to fully master his Radiance of Golden Glory, refining his power to Gold pinnacle. He had just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday then—while most Holy Knights had just reached the barrier to Gold, he had seen the gates of Supreme that represented the limit of being ‘human’.

Then, three years after fighting the Evil God of Calamity with a certain warrior in another world and focused training, Roland made a breakthrough and obtained Strength Mastery at thirty.

At that point, none from the Seven Gods Church save for the Pope himself could beat him. Be it his fellow Holy Knights or priests, senior temple pastors or the Commander of the Holy Knights, all of them wisely surrendered before Roland’s Holy Light that was at once rich and volatile. Even Robzek, a Supreme Holy Knight who was also his mentor and friend could only smile painfully that he had been surpassed by his junior.

That was why Roland would be pontiff’s successor: not because he was Igor’s godson, but because there was no other candidate.

“What are you thinking about, Roland?”

Suddenly, a man’s rather angry voice rang, and with it came a heavy punch—mountain breaking, ground splitting, and continent sinking!

Boom —their environment that had long since been beaten into vacuum and be without sound. But as supremely condense lifeforce stirred, an astonishing rumble echoed in the minds of all Extraordinary individuals who could sense shifts in energy.

Withdrawing the roving memories back into himself and gathering the thoughts wandering miles away, Roland promptly opened his eyes that he had closed some time. He saw an iron fist that glinted in cold, metal light and carrying bright plasma sparks rapidly crashed towards his own head!

In less than the thousandth of a second, the iron fist had already shot right into Roland’s face. Plasma fiery light more blinding than the sun that could burn the human eye into ashes, and even a Supreme champion had to narrow his eyes to avoid losing his sight temporarily.

Roland could feel the magnitude of that strike and the direness of his situation. Countless thoughts flashed through his mind in that instant, but his body that was trained over a thousand times and his battle instinct picked the right choice—the Holy Knight quickly raised the adamantite shield on his right hand to meet that heavy punch.

Bang!!!

Gray holy light that was not bright but actually dull flowed away from Roland’s body, turning into streaks of rays that gathered into that great shield as the shield itself, adorned with the holy sigil of the Seven Gods Church, met the mountain crumbling punch. However, instead of the mundane outcome of shield blocking fist, the atmosphere was torn apart with a shrill howl, while the iron fist crushed the adamantite shield as if it was a cookie, before hitting Roland’s face without slowing down at all.

Flesh was distinctly vaporized in an instant, the Holy Knight’s figure instantly blown away into the distance. His body drew a long trail on the thin air over a dozen miles, before crashing heavily onto the grey-white sand.

“Don’t be distracted in the battle. Roland, you had challenged me on your own accord, to spar with me using the same Supreme pinnacle ability.”

In front of the crash crater that was dozens of meters wide and billowing with green smoke, the figure of a black-haired man appeared behind the sheet of smoke and stood by the crater’s edge. “I’ve promised you that because you are my friend,” he told Roland with a serene tone as the Holy Knight still lay at the center of the crater, “And if you consider myself your friend too, you should treat this seriously.”

“Focus on the fight. Don’t let me underestimate you.”

In return, the Holy Knight’s body twitched. Gray Holy Light shrouded his form as he slowly sat up before rising to his feet—veins of the same Holy Light that resembled arteries appeared over his skull that was now bare bone, swiftly returning Roland’s face of flesh.

His shoulder joints were ringing with the brittle sounds of bones regenerating, just as the muscle fiber and arteries that had been pulverized with great power began to close and healed.

“It’s my fault.”

Stepping out of the crater, Roland apologized to the black-haired figure earnestly. “The glimpse of the stars just now stirred my mind and distracted me for an instant.”

“Ever since I have learned from you about the truth of this galaxy and Multiverse, I could not help but think why the world is like this each time I see the stars.”

The smoke dispersed. Two men could be seen in a desolated desert of sand, with almost no light shining over the grey land. In the faraway darkness was the hint of flickering starlight, the only source of light of this land.

If one looked further and watched this dark realm from the distance, one would see a broken planet. Icy winds billowed across the surface of the dead planet, which had part of its crust broken apart by ancient war, while in the distance, the star that was drained of all energy and reduced into a white dwarf whirled slowly in the dusty nebula.

Here was the sixth hundred and eighty-first Abyss, a desolate world that fell in the Final Battle, consumed by the Chaos in the path to its end.

Over the stony wastelands of the shattered planet, Roland took a deep breath and began to gather Holy Light in his body. Before him was a clone of Legendary warrior Joshua van Radcliffe who had lowered his ability to Supreme tier—facing his friend and powerful foe, Roland grasped thin air with both his hands, filling it with Holy Light to conjure a cross-shaped Warhammer in one hand and a shield with another.

“I could never understand why the Multiverse, borne of the Initial Flame is so despair and dark. It is simply inexplicable.”

Even before he finished, the Holy Knight’s feet moved, kicking up dust as Roland darted as a streak of light towards Joshua.

While Roland had been slightly maimed due to his distraction before, he maintained his peak form with powerful Holy Light defense and healing—on the almost empty, dead planet, the Supreme-pinnacle Holy Knight’s speed reached seventeen thousand meters per second at once, fifty times the speed of light!

Under such velocity, it would not take an instant to cover a distance of one hundred meters, with only a streak of dull grey light visible. The black-haired man’s clone, however, simply grinned: facing the grey light that could not be caught with typical observation spells, his own form vanished instantly as well, while explosions erupted one after another over the stony wastelands, the dazzling flash of energies appearing on every corner of the wastelands as if little hills.

Now, both men who were Supreme pinnacle rapidly clashed and exchanged blows at several dozen times the speed of sound.

Waves of violent force burst away from the iron fist, shaking the Holy Knight’s body. The gray holy light was impregnable as well, soaking into the warrior’s arms with dark strength. Both sides parried and attacked—burning knifehand strike cut at Roland’s Holy Light shield, while the warhammer crashed down upon Joshua’s shoulder which was covered in metal armor with a dull echo.

“Roland, Brandon challenged me before as well. He wanted to spar with me, and I agreed.”

Just when the Holy Knight directed all his attention and effort into the battle of rapid defense and attack, the warrior’s voice echoed clearly beside his ears. “He wanted to try how sharp and how heavy his blades are through me, to know how strong he was as a Supreme pinnacle and how far ahead he could advance…”

“So, I kicked him into the sun.”

At those words, wild alarms began to ring in Roland’s mind. His eyes widened as he hurriedly evaded—but it was too late. Joshua had closed in rapidly, raising his right hand high above and thumped down heavily on the Holy Knight’s skull. It was a massive blow as strong as a mountain crashing down from the skies, and if Roland’s skull would undoubtedly be broken if he could not parry it.

“Aaaargh!”

To escape that fate, Roland could only quickly raise his hands, drawing two distinct veins of white Holy Light. Growling quietly, he kept his Holy Light Hammer and shield above himself. Then, with a sheet of gray-white radiance that appeared over the Holy Knight’s face, an angelic halo appeared over his head as well.

But Joshua’s blow had already reached.

Boom!

As their offense and defense clashed, all song vanished.

Unimaginable power promptly crashed upon the stone of the planet’s surface, tearing its already split crust. The tides of energy drawn by that great force bent even the light and fire, while the cooling planet’s mantle was at once punch through by that power gathered unto a single line. Meanwhile, the Holy Knight’s figure that was enshrouded in Holy Knight dragged a long gray trail, hammered deep into the mantle and crashed into the planet’s core.

“At the time, the surface of the sun exploded by coincidence. The heat and light of planets engulfed millions of miles in a storm of light—and Brandon cut down the corona, stepping out of the surface of the sun.”

“The glint of his sword was like the Abyss that destroys everything. The Polar Blade determined life, death and cuts down all worlds and all things—even Chaos would meet their end. He achieved his objective, and found what he wanted.”

Deep within the mantle of the broken planet, the core heat had yet to completely dissipated even after the sun had died, with viscous golden-red liquid metal slowly squirming. In fact, before the core’s burning heat, there were no magma, stone or liquid. The matter of all substances could not be differentiated here, with even the sturdiest of alloys becoming as soft as oil, yet harder than diamonds.

Nonetheless, in that soft layer of burning metals, a figure slowly stepped out of the golden-red smelt. His head that was almost splintered by the warrior’s blow quickly healing amidst gray Holy Light, the first thing to completely regenerate was the Holy Knight’s bright and determined eyes.

“It’s nothing.”

Using Holy Light to vibrate the super dense metal layer and creating a deafening voice, he said, “Even I could walk out of a star.”

“Even so, Joshua, Brandon could find what he wanted because he was single-minded. He has a wife and daughters, and with a family he could protect, he does not have to consider other matters. He had placed all ideals in love and kinship, and could advance with incomparable determination even without an answer.”

But I am different.

I want answers.

Endless doubt in his mind, the Holy Knight who suffered blow after blow rose again. He should have found the path that belonged to himself long ago with his innate gifts. But for some reason, Roland forcefully held back that instinctively agitated desire to refine himself after pacifying unrests across the galaxy: the man who was as stalwart as steel in his ideals would never allow himself to be lost.

And before finding the answer in his heart, Roland would never compromise with this world and advance whimsically.