Soul of Searing Steel

“Is that all it needs to threaten the local powers?”

Vahina, who had been holding a rune aloft while keeping behind Joshua to capture the entire scene of a dead world having its sun reignited lowered the psionic crystal in her hand. “Although your power is ridiculous—even excessively so, according to Pope Igor there should be several beings as powerful as you are in other galaxies.”

“The local civilization may decide not to challenge us because of the record since power is something even the most ruthless would fear… but to the more powerful civilizations, your display of strength would make your death their first priority.”

“This definitely wouldn’t frighten the powerful local factions.”

The voice of the Giant God who loomed over the sun shook the world, and as Vahina looked on, Joshua’s body shrank until it was no bigger than the planet three light seconds away. He watched the artificial star he had molded himself, and said flatly, “But both Igor and I thought the same—they would try to attack before we could establish a solid foothold here, just as I believe we should wage a decisive battle against them while our infrastructure was still lacking.”

“Vahina, do you want to wait until we had established some huge base, and be attacked by those powerful otherworld civilizations after millions or more came to live here? Yes, you don’t, we don’t and they don’t. Which is why my declaration is entirely informative.”

At that, Joshua’s mouth curved into a smile, and the sage could see snow-white, mountainous teeth reflecting off the sun’s light. “And then comes the fight.”

“If they really wish to defeat us or work together, they should come now—the longer this drags on, both their and our losses would increase. If they are smart enough and holds absolute malice in their minds, they should head for us to strike us down at this moment.”

Otherwise, they could only watch as we develop this system like a steel bucket, and when the dimensional hub is complete and the Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds is connected to this galaxy, those otherworld civilizations would hold no sway.

Vahina was quiet in return as the Legendary sage pondered as well. Joshua had his logic, but there would definitely be unexpected situations when it came to the real thing—such as when would the theoretical hostile civilizations attack? That alone could hardly be guessed since Mycroft’s civilization had no large surveillance facilities such as the Void Observatory here, and it was not a simple matter to attack an enemy before they were aware of it.

“Moreover, there’s no telling how many hostile civilizations there would be. It would be fine if it was just one, but if several invaded together, even Joshua himself might be able to stop them.

If their enemy attacked together before the dimensional hub was completed, the Legendary champions would be thrown into a difficult battle—who would keep building then? Without reinforcements from the dimensional hub, the Combined Expeditionary Fleet would never repel the local civilizations’ violent attacks that were supported by infinite reinforcements no matter how powerful they would be.

But there were times when simply thinking about it was meaningless.

***

Time passed as everyone worked busily.

In the face of the crushing combat force of the Combined Fleet, the Eldars could only choose to cave. Thus, the Legendary champions aside from Joshua and the Demon Generals began to play good cop, bad cop—either way, the Eldar rulers utterly relinquished any thought of resistance when they displayed their power. They would also have to thank Goliath the Demon King for that since the presence of its bloodline evolved from another species of large insect almost left an entire Eldar colony planet comatose, its Abyssal power and despair aura making it stand in a league of its own in the aspect of intimidation.

Though it was still lacking compared to Joshua’s former presence, it was plenty enough for the Eldars.

At present, the Eldars could see that the foreign fleet that had arrived here from the Lost Galaxy and crossing the Silent Void may lack in numbers and underdeveloped as a collective civilization, their individual martial force was far beyond most found in the Multiverse. To put it in another way: they are a civilization of Void Behemoths that is complete from the most inferior infants to the most elite individuals building a complete society. While they have the habit of collective living, their finest would live in Void regions alone, wielding individual power comparable to an entire civilization.

Although the entire Eldarian main fleet was held custody in a corner of the Zeta Ram system, their crew yet to be returned since they were using them for construction work under the observation of the Combined Fleet, there was not much resentment across the entire Eldar civilization. There would certainly be some since there were those being held as captives and forced to labor, but the Combined Fleet had actually generously paid them a salary.

Though nothing but a number presently, against champions who could create a sun, grow ecosystems, melt frozen planets and cut down continents with a single sword swing, the Eldars did not believe that they were not rewarded. In addition, after point exchange system went online, they were even allowed to make a digital purchase through the Spirit Terminals they redeemed, buying merchandises from the Lost Galaxy which no lacks in strategic resources that the Eldars could not find in their own galaxy.

Those materials would be valued beyond tenfold if they were moved back to their home planet—even the Eldarian rulers hoping that the captives would work a little longer in response to the Combined Fleet’s generosity to exchange for much needed resources including pure psionic crystals. It would greatly help with efficiency of their entire psionic network, in turn shifting it into the nation’s power.

One way or another, the Eldars’ galaxy was hence named by the Galaxy of Beginnings by the Combined Fleet. After subjugating the sole local power, the expedition began to dispatch scouts and surveyed the entire galaxy.

A hundred and twenty-eight parties hence departed in scout ships of an equal number from their Void base. Small vessels that moved quickly through the Void and having the most advanced engines and cores, each could perform emergency Void to the dimensional hub should an emergency arise. They would survey certain vital systems or nodes in the Galaxy of Beginnings, placing monitoring beacons as a temporary perimeter before the larger surveillance facilities were completed.

Priest and his team who possess rich experience in studying and evaluating new worlds after years of working with the Imperial External Exploration Department were supervising that effort. Apart from assuming the responsibility to ensure that each scout ship was actually exploring their objective, they would also be prospecting galaxy of origins. Their training having been personally overseen by Joshua over three years, the Elite Party essentially felt a weight off their minds—filled with vigor, they were almost impatient to get to work as they steered observing vessel 001 towards the distance.

Still, every ranking officer of the expedition as well as each Legendary champion including Joshua did not think that the probing would yield any results. After all, the Eldars had explored their own home thoroughly as the sole race that lived here, and the Galaxy of Beginnings was a barren fringe galaxy on its own that had no star systems with strategic resources such as the Superconductive Arcane Silver. Indeed, even Priest and the others thought that they were simply exploring parts of the galaxy that the Eldars might have missed.

But unexpectedly, in the second day right after the scouting began, startling news were relayed to the Combined Fleet’s headquarters from each scout ship, one after the other.

When scout ship 079 scanned the darkened star system 3491, they noted in surprise that there was an unnatural anomaly found within the inner integrity of one of the dead continental realms. The party of the scout ship hence dispatched a drone to study the world from the inside.

And the result was astonishing.

The unusual continental frame of star system 3491’s prime world (the largest planet or living world in a system) was not one formed from natural seismic activities, but the remains of a supermassive magical puppet. Its body was half-buried beneath the continent, while its single lifted hand (or limb) was the bulk of the continent’s highest peak that stood over thirteen thousand meters tall. The Eldarians had actually explored that system before, but their equipment was less advanced, while the explosion of arcane minerals from their own homeworld made them used to having many bizarre forms on their world’s surface, which was why they overlooked the existence of that puppet.

Humans, however, were different—that exceedingly unusual landscape was simply too distinct and unnatural to human eyes.

Follow-up studies revealed that the length of the enchanted puppet’s remains was over twenty-four thousand meters, with a reimagined depiction revealing that it was a Void-class battle puppet with a centipede form, having an engine that was clearly used for moving around the Void. Element decay also revealed that it had broken through the planet’s World Barrier ninety hundred and twenty thousand years ago and fell inside the realm, its unexpected crash leading to the complete collapse of the world’s ecosystems and causing a deadly winter season of dust, most of the continent landscapes altered permanently from the collision as well.

The astonishing find had prompted the scout ships to be ten times more focused than they were, with Priest and the others especially concentrating to find similar relics such as that colossal arcane puppet.

Even the most advanced surveying equipment of the Eldars could not uncover what could be buried beneath the soil over a million years ago. On the other hand, the True Vision tool which development Joshua had supervised and contained certain proportions of Steel Strength could precisely see through a planet’s crust and even its mantle when operating on full capacity. With such an excessively advanced observation method, every relic that the Eldars could not find were revealed as clearly as a sun in the darkness for the scout ships of Mycroft.

It also led to a series of continuous discoveries in relation to relics.

Afterward, scout ship 008 had landed on the prime world of system 14634, a living world. The drone had broken through the atmosphere landed on a plain, and as its beacon activated, exploration team 008 entered the world through a portal, and realized in surprise that were two distinct ecosystems in that world. One was carpeted in crimson moss where various unusual worms and fungi lived, the other was the more commonly seen ecosystems—virgin forests that resembled those in Mycroft, in which different species of primates lived.

Studies revealed that they were natives to world 14634 that lived there since several million years ago, with fossils of their ancestors excavated. As for the worms, they proved to be unexpectedly intelligent and showed a parasitic capacity, with the earliest signs of their existence found over seven hundred thousand years ago… Although they were present in that world early on, they were clearly foreign.

The scout team 008 also discovered in shock that each placing the worms on the primates greatly increases the primate’s intelligence, and soon the team found an entire society of monkeys hosting the worms in another corner of the world. They had even learned to use fire and tools, as well as invented basic language through clapping and howling.

The worm lifeforms did not have strong individual mental faculties, but when it latches onto a brainstem, they could think jointly with the brain of another creature. That was how they raised the primate’s intelligence from a beastly level to the point that it could learn Mycroft’s common tongue. Test subjects even learned to say single worlds such as ‘greetings’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘eat’ progressively faster.

The worms and their hosts were hence transported to the Combined Fleet’s headquarters. There, Yana Milo deduced psionically that they must have had a developed society, but their hosts had somehow died out while themselves arrived on world 14634 inside Void ships, eventually declining to their present state. While the Nature’s Magister added that they should be careful that the worms would eventually invade their host’s brain until they completely occupied it and replaced it as the hosts’ mental faculty, with the descendants of the primates that they latched onto showing distinct devolution, even birthing aberrant such as brainless infants.

They must have been an advanced parasitic civilization.

Team 059 also uncovered startling information, finding ruins of an ancient city beneath the sea. An ammonia-based world, weird metal buildings protruded out of the strange purple sea—a magic tower that did not collapse over three to four hundred thousand years, with dilapidated runic circles remaining inside the tower.

A frowning Barnil concluded that the tower once belonged to a civilization with powerful arcane arts after nullifying the spells, boasting magical skill which did not dull in comparison to Mycroft’s. From the style of the ruins, it was even clear that use of magic was more common than it was in the present Starfall Era, to the point that almost every citizen could wield magic. Restoration portraits that even children playgrounds contain toys that need magic to be activated, meaning that even their young have considerable magical ability.

Mycroft’s expedition hence discovered diverse ancient civilization from three hundred thousand years ago, the shocking discoveries leaving the Eldars completely astonished. They had thought that they were the first intelligent life of this galaxy, but never would they imagine that they were lucky to awaken when the ancient civilizations died out.

In return, Joshua was surprised, but not finding things that unexpected.

“According to my calculations, those fringe galaxies of the Multiverse were the most dated and ancient realms—there were no high-energy worlds there because each had diminished as time passed, or were absorbed by other newborn galaxies.”

As the Legendary champions convened for a discussion, the warrior frowned heavily as he did not hesitate to reveal his new perspective. “Three hundred thousand years ago—before the Glorious Era and two hundred thousand years before the Astral Dragons died out, the Galaxy of Beginnings had seen a galactic-scale destruction. Many civilizations and unknown species were destroyed in the battle, the supermassive arcane Void puppet that team 079 discovered being a classic example. There is no question that it wields Legendary-tier destructive force, but it was still crushed and left falling onto the continent of another world.

The name of the unknown enemy was written merely for formality on the reports. In fact, everyone present thought of those two words at once.

Evil Gods.