Soul of Searing Steel

Steel revelation, Silver Radiant Spirit, Golden Glory Radiance

From perceiving and utilizing energy all the way to cultivating and strengthening it, one would be able to understand a power that belonged only to him or her. The body of that person would be able to advance into the body of an extraordinary. That was the process of progressive tier advancement in the world of Steel and Fire.

In the first millennium of the world where life had just started, everything in the world was ignorant to all things around them. They lived in an environment with the densest elements and magic energy. However, they could not systematically utilize the Elements and magic energy around them. Of course, there were some exceptions. Other than the transformations with primitive concepts such as the Ancient Dragons, many of the ancient lives could reach Silver-tier at most. The Glorious Strength did not appear until the living beings had obtained wisdom and understood the meaning of 'self'.

However, that did not mean that the era did not have existences that were beyond the Gold tier.

Using some of the items with special powers, the ancient people could reach what was now called the Supreme-tier, a realm where one had detached himself from a realm with 'limits'.

The Nuclear Star was one of those items.

The fragment of the sun. Up to this point, Joshua had communicated with the Nuclear Star with his own true power and had come to understand the meaning of its name. Because that huge piece of gemstone contained an infinite source of light.

The holder of the item would possess control over the blazing sun and rule the light from heaven. That power was called the 'Supreme Flame'. Because the power obtained through this method could not enhance the essence of life, nor could that person who obtained the power through that reach the Legendary-tier. Hence, that method to gain power had been abandoned by the extraordinary. However, that did not mean that the power was weak.

The warrior who had already focused his mind was slowly driving the power that was in its center.

At the border of the plane across the blood moon, a gigantic blue rift cracked across the void like a long and gigantic scar. Irregular black cracks extended from it. Its interior was filled with the light of Chaos, causing the void to appear surreal as if the entire void was filled with shadows of fantasy. However, as time passed, the cracks became clearer. Looking closer at the void, there were abyssal dragons waiting to cross into the world.

Facing the dimensional space that was gradually transforming from illusion to reality, Joshua slowly flew higher into the sky by driving the combat aura from his body. Red light that looked like ripples began to spread from the giant Nuclear Star he held in between his arms, in front of his chest.

The heat that was hot enough to burn everything was cultivated by the warrior from the Nuclear Star and released upon the plane of the blood moon. It felt just like igniting a small blazing fire in the middle of the endless darkness in the Dark Abyss. The red light began burning in the void and caused a small hot sun to appear in the blood-red world.

On the other side of that dimensional rift, the abyssal dragons that were waiting for the teleportation to be completed also noticed the presence of a man.

"A human being?"

"Why would there be any trace of a human being in the blood moon of the Dark Abyss?"

"What is he doing? Is he ready to attack us now?"

Among the formations of the abyssal dragons, sarcastic laughter began to spread. Those powerful and young Pentashade Dragons which were born in the Dark Abyss had great confidence. They had followed the champions of their own race in conquering quite a number of planes in the Dark Abyss. Their mission was to return to Mycroft Continent and take down the land where holy light shone for eternity, the Sacred Mountain of the Seven Gods.

In the face of such powerful forces, those abyssal dragons did not show even the slightest fear, let alone when facing a human. They did not bother themselves with the unusual phenomenon of a human in the Dark Abyss. Instead, they chose to ignore it.

That man was just a Supreme-tier human–there were ten thousand abyssal dragons by the rift. So what could a human possibly do against that massive force?

Robzek and the others had successfully activated the Wheel of the Holy Light and they had completely destroyed the abyssal rift. Robzek, Roland and Saya turned around and look towards the direction of where Joshua and the border of the plane were.

The Dimensional Passage between the blood moon plane and the Mycroft Continent had been completely severed. Powers of Chaos and Holy Light intertwine as they rolled unstably within the Dimensional Space. It would not calm down for centuries to come. With its influence, the sea region in the Anos Abyss temporarily became a sprawling area. The plane of the Dark Abyss would never be able to cross over through that Dimension ever again.

The mission tasked by the Church of the Seven Gods had been accomplished. The dimensional circle in the interior of the Epoch was activated. The clergy were preparing the summoning ritual at the Sacred Mountain in the distant sea in order to summon the holy ark back to their world.

The time required to complete the summoning ritual was not long. However, that amount of time was enough for the abyssal dragons to shred everyone onboard into pieces. Their fates depended on if Joshua could get his task done. He would need to make sure that he could block the enemies of the Order on the other end of the dimension before the ritual was completed.

Buzz—

The dark and red gemstone that in Joshua's arms was charging up with his power and looked brighter. The Nuclear Star was overflowing with energy. The heat and light overflowed from the Nuclear Star and illuminated the entire space around it.

The power of the Azurite was constantly extracting and injecting the energy. The warrior looked at the mini sun that was as large as half the size of an ordinary man. The red golden sun with the power of Order had caused all darkness and Chaos to fade away. He turned around and looked at the Dimensional Rift that was about to make everything dark and chaotic. Looking at the cracks in time and space that were almost materializing, he sneered.

The Nuclear Star that was completely charged up could not be completely controlled, not even by the warrior even if he used his full strength. However, he never had the intention to control it any way. The golden energy turned into lightning and wrapped around both of his arms.

"Although I feel really sorry for the Emperor, I still want to see the effect of a fully charged Supreme-grade treasure!"

How was it possible for the warrior to burn an extraordinary item that could cost a lot of money just to purchase one in his past life, right? Lifting both of his hands, a blinding golden light began to illuminate the darkness of the Dark Abyss. An energy gathered around Joshua's palms, causing the gigantic gemstone that was originally half the size of an ordinary man to expand in size, turning itself into a gigantic golden ball of flame that was a few ten meters huge.

That fire ball burned with energy. Streams of energy flows that looked like the flares around the sun burst and released high heat that broke the dimension of the space. The heat flows went back into the center of the fire ball.

"Behold the power of the blazing sun! 'Stoner Sunshine'!"

Laughing madly as he lifted the small sun above his head, Joshua's eyes were like dark shadows under the intense light from the fireball above him. His eyes were set upon the Dimensional Rift. He timed it right and tossed the gigantic fireball straight at the rift!

At that moment.

The entire plane of the blood moon was entirely overshadowed by the golden light. The broken world that had already lost its sun was greeted with sunlight after a long time. Half of the plane was returned to their former glory. Every single trace of the presence of Chaos and evil was instantly purified and suppressed. There was even a slight presence of life.

The moment the gigantic mass of fireball was tossed out by the warrior, it instantly accelerated to the limit of its speed and turned into an energy ball. It instantly flew across a couple of thousand meters and rammed violently into the rift.

"Could this be?!"

On the other side of the rift, the leader of the abyssal dragons could only respond to the situation after it saw the mass of energy ball arriving at the rift. It roared loudly as its eyes were filled with shock. That Supreme-tier abyssal dragon did not even a single clue about what the human just did. He could actually launch a strike strong enough to destroy the structure of the dimension within a few seconds.

How was that possible?

However, it was not able to solve the problem at all. Beams of golden light penetrated the dimensional rift. Light was escaping from the rift, allowing the blazing fires to spread as they burned up the void. The powerful surge of energy instantly struck right into the formation of the abyssal dragons, followed by an intense explosion and high heat that devoured over thousands of abyssal dragons in an instant.

"Roar!!! Damn it!!!"

"What the hell just happened?!"

"Damn human! He shattered the dimensional node! The teleportation passage is about to close itself !"

Boom—

As the abyssal dragons roared in shock and rage, a sound of an explosion came from the void. A golden mass of spherical energy barrier continued to spread by the border of the plane. Blue ripples of the dimensional waves were completely covered by it. The gigantic dimensional rift had become surreal again under the influence of that energy ball. It distorted a little like a screen being switched off after a signal interruption and vanished into the void without a trace.

"It's over."

Clasping his hands together, Joshua was too lazy to bother himself with what happened to the abyssal dragons on the other side of the dimensional rift. The fully charged Nuclear Star had released its most powerful strike 'Stoner Sunshine' which could only be used once. And because of that, the abyssal dragons descended into chaos and were intimidated by the power of that blast. So they were unable to gather enough power to travel through the dimensional passage between the planes of the Dark Abyss.

At least the abyssal dragons were not able to cross into the plane of the blood moon during the time when everyone was waiting to be teleported back to the Mycroft Continent. The abyssal dragons were also greeted with a powerful strike that instantly took out quite a number of them. No doubt that they had been greatly demoralized after being misled into believing that a single human being could do so much damage to them. It would take days before they could recover and get themselves ready to cross into the plane of the blood moon again. As for the abyssal dragons that were able to get through the dimensional passage, perhaps all of them had been devoured by the mighty impact of the 'Stoner Sunshine' and suffered a fate much worse than the others—death.

The warrior turned around and flew back to the Epoch. After landing onto the deck of the ark, everyone was staring at Joshua in shock and surprise.

"… sigh."

Funa who had already transformed herself back to her ordinary form walked up to the warrior and patted his shoulder. The blue draconic lady opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but changed her mind. The three members of the church who were standing beside the warrior, Robzek, Roland, and Saya, were also staring at the warrior in disbelief. The black draconic girl, who looked a little exhausted, walked up to the warrior and hugged his arm.

Everyone had understood what Joshua did—he used the Order power and his own power to charge the positive energy contained in the Nuclear Star. Then, he tossed the entire thing out like a super bomb towards the dimensional rift and detonate it completely.

The idea was simple and rough. However, no ordinary man could have done that. It would require precise control in order to drive the energy embedded within the Nuclear Star. Everyone who was onboard the ark, even Robzek and Saya, were barely capable of doing that. They were not in a good state at the moment. They might even get sucked into the energy ball while charging the power of the Nuclear Star.

More importantly, the Nuclear Star was not a treasure of the Church of the Seven Gods. It was the property of the Diamond Family. The two holy knights and the great nun would never detonate a thing that did not belong to them. As a dragon, Funa did not even think of wanting to keep the gemstone to herself. So how could she possibly think about that?

"… This time, we have to thank Count Radcliffe… or else, our operation would definitely have ended up in a disaster …"

Robzek breathed out in relief and finally responded to the situation. He looked around and spoke to everyone around him with a deep and clear voice, "Now is not the time to chat. Let's get back to the cabin and take a rest first. We will have to wait more than ten minutes before we can leave. So everyone should get some rest and replenish your spirit and energy so that we can be ready for any unforeseen circumstance later."

At that time, the entire white ark was under the protection of the remaining power from the cinder's residue above the ark. Most of the presence of the Dark Abyss had been cleansed by the 'Stone Sunshine' released by the Nuclear Star. If there were no more accidents, the remaining crews of the ark would be able to regain their consciousness. By then, they would require someone to lead them to reequip themselves and fix the internal damage of the ark in order to prevent the Epoch from disintegrating during the teleportation back to the Mycroft Continent.

There was nothing to talk about. Joshua retired himself and brought a very sleepy Black to the top of the ark. Then he poured some of the Order power into the cinder circle and quietly watched the gears and the divine magical formation of recombination which were layers of divine rune structures. White holy light reflected in his eyes.

This time, the warrior had acquired quite a lot of information from Nolan. Some of the information was classified information not known to the players in his past life.

The Mycroft Continent was already dead. It was relying heavily on the combustion of Chaos. The Evil God of Fertility was the firewood that kept the world going. However, that source of the fire was about to be extinguished.

The organization behind Nolan obviously knew the truth. So, they were plotting to incite wars all over the dark world. After that, they would open the gate to the Dark Abyss when all forces in the world were too weak to fight back. Their main purpose was to drag the Mycroft Continent into the Dark Abyss in order to obtain the remaining power to continue existing.

However, the invasion of the demonic legion was not within their expectation. So, Nolan appeared in the pre-existence to aid Joshua and the others to defend against the invasion of the demons. However, just as they were about to prevail in the invasion of the demons and repel the power of the Dark Abyss from invading the world, Nolan committed treason.

"The look of a defeated dog that has given up hope… how pathetic…"

After sighing gently, Joshua shook his head and carried Black, who was now asleep, back into the cabin.

The truth about the treason in the past life no longer matter. The most important thing was the other news he learned from Nolan.

—The Sage.

Leading the gods to repel the forces of the Dark Abyss, killing many Evil Gods, and even reshaped the corpse of the powerful Evil God [Fertility] into a great continent, the power exhibited by the Sage mentioned by Nolan was beyond the power of the gods. It was even absurd and unimaginable. And that mighty existence had suddenly vanished without a trace after the Glorious Era. He only left four of his Inheritance artifacts behind. Everything was suspicious and strange.

There was no evidence to prove that the Sage was still alive, nor was there any evidence to suggest that he was already dead.

"The information is still too little." After returning to his own cabin, the warrior laid Black down on the bed and covered her with a blanket. Joshua sat on the side of the bed and frowned a little and seemed to have made up his mind about something, "I remember now. Last time, when I was about to borrow the dual blades from Brandon to take a closer look at it, I was interrupted by the incident of the demonic ritual. When I get back to the North, I must remember to borrow the blades and take a closer look to see if there is some sort of all new Inheritance hidden somewhere in within the blades…"

Buzz buzz—

At the central core of the Epoch where the main hall of the ark was, an energy wave that the warrior was extremely familiar with appeared.

That was the fluctuating energy waves of the reversed retraction teleportation coming from the dimensional beacon.

The situation was similar to the situation back when they were on the Gale. However, it was a little bit more intense and more stable. With the activation of the ritual carried out by the clergy in the Sacred Mountains back in the other world, blue rippling dimensional waves began to appear around the body of the Epoch. The body of the ark began to fade and ripple as if it was turning into some sort of illusion. Soon after that, the entire ark was covered by the dimensional waves like a cocoon.

The entire ark, which was wrecked up pretty bad, instantly vanished without a trace.

*****

[Legendary Event—The Solemn Moon]

[Starfall Year 833, a party sent by the Church of the Seven Gods back in the Sacred Mountain of the Seven Gods departed from the gray island Aida as they traveled across the sea to locate the abyssal rift that was hidden in the depths of Anos Abyss. Along their journey, the expedition party had experienced multiple challenges caused by the conspiracies of the Pentashade Dragons. They were able to arrive on the plane of the blood moon where the abyssal rift was located at. While they were on the surface of the shady blood moon, the expedition party had gone through multiple ordeals as they battled their enemies. Finally, they defeated the Crystalline Abyssal Dragon Mandagar and ended the evil plan of the Pentashade Dragons to converge two worlds into one.]

[Legendary achievement —Gaze upon the Dark Abyss]

[—Only the most determined person could stare into the Dark Abyss.]

*****

The plane of the blood moon had once again become calm and quiet after losing the Crystalline Abyssal Dragon and the expedition party from the church.

The Dark Abyss, also known to be the remaining wreckages of the world that had been shattered and destroyed long ago, had fragments of giant floating islands in the space. The calm blood moon emitted rays of light on everything that seemed dead.

However, without any reason, the blood sea that was extremely quiet without even a sign of movement suddenly rippled. The blood sea began to move as if something was moving underneath the surface.

Gradually and slowly, a gigantic hand that was condensed from the viscous blood sea emerged on the surface of the red moon. Although that hand was extremely thin, the length of the arm was easily a few thousand meters long. That hand did not have any finger on it. It was still shifting its shape between the shape of the fingers and the shape of a claw. It seemed to be indecisive on which shape it should take.

In the end, it chose the fingers of an ordinary human.

That gigantic arm with the color of blood looked slender and beautiful, just like the arm of a lady. It began waving as if it was happy to have finally to assume its new form. Soon, the gigantic red arm trembled a little as it broke through into the void, reaching itself through the border of the plane as if it 'picked' up something.

Those were the fragments of a red gemstone that looked a little dull. They were still emitting the light of the sun as blazing positive energy surged within it.

"Sun…"

It sounded just like the voice of a baby, soft and faint, as the arm put the shattered fragments of red gemstone into the core of the blood sea.

The fragments of the world and the fragments of the sun.

The two had finally met. It was a reunion for the both.

Or perhaps that was some sort of a fate.

—Arc 6, The Solemn Moon. End.

—Soul of the Searing Steel Season 1, Year of the Starfall. End.