Soul of Searing Steel

There was a single nightmarish dread shared among the countless civilizations, races, nations, and federations as well as all sentient life within the multiverse.

That was the Chaos that walked amidst the Void, the symbol of destruction. It was the remnant of civilization, the undead across all heaven and earth, and even more so the ruination that would end all things.

No existence would be spare from their corruption. Stars would dim, light would disperse while even worlds would be destroyed and assimilated.

And the blond man who held the blades saw the scene in bygone millennia.

The celestial limbs that plummeted from the dark clouds, the Chaos touch that descended from the void of space—it was a behemoth that escaped human imagination, a horror that wandered the space between the stars and various worlds. The atmosphere was shaken by its very presence, heaven and earth trembling according to its will.

Apart from that, there was a plain but sharp edge that was held aloft amidst the rain.

It was neither sword nor knife, but something bound together by radiance—a blade assembled by Order. It broke apart the ever-present downpour, its cold silver light flashing across the land.

A tired swordsman held the sharp blade of light aloft; his long hair swaying amidst the wind and rain. Both his eyes were fixated on the black tentacle that seemed to tilt mountains, squirming as it descended from the skies, its body loftily erect.

“Chaos.” The man said, his steady voice echoing amidst the booming thunder.

“Go back.”

Then, the sharp blade moved, extending endless light.

The dazzling radiance vanished after a single flash and yet illuminated the horizon. Countless silver lines spread along the path of the blade towards every direction and split the world into two. The touch of [Air] that was larger than mountains was instantly cut apart by the orbit, and the crumbling Chaos wind dispersing into dark clouds across the sky within moments.

However, it was quickly bound where it was by the silver lines that turned into innumerable chains, turning into a black sphere and pulled down onto the land.

The illusion ended.

Brandon Kaos opened his eyes, moved by the Evil God’s agony at its birth, while understanding the secrets behind the path of light. The blond swordsman clenched both his hands, the unparalleled rigor energy optimizing, reconstructing and sublimating within his body as he willed it.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in the threshold of Supreme.

Beside him, Joshua disarmed the Dragonslayer Swordspear and let the divine armament siblings stand behind him.

“Congratulations.” He nodded, offering his compliments with a smile. “You’ve reached Supreme too.”

Though the corner of the blond swordsman’s lips had curled up, he could not help but sigh after leveling his gaze on the ferocious gaze of the warrior. “To have you congratulate me—you, who are seven to eight years younger than I am, but advancing into Supreme much earlier… To be frank, I really can’t be happy at all, my friend.”

Joshua shrugged to skip the topic. He then turned towards the remains of the Evil God fragment—a pillar cyan smoke that still had not disappeared. “You’ve seen it too?” he asked.

Although there was no hint, the meaning was self-evident.

“Of course.” Brandon nodded solemnly. He opened his mouth to speak, but only did so after he hesitated for a while. “I’ve never thought that an Evil God would be a victim in its previous incarnation. Joshua, were you already aware early on?”

According to what the blond swordsman knew, Evil Gods were unnamable malevolence that wandered the void. They were born without reason, subsequently laying waste to worlds and civilizations without reason to wipe out the fruits that gave life to all intelligence. But now that he knew of the truth that he never even imagined before, it was certainly hard for Brandon to accept it for the time being.

Joshua was aware of that too, which was why he simply shook his head and replied with a tranquil voice.

“Brandon, the sadness of those in sorrow has nothing to do with us. The realm of Mycroft is not powerful enough to show compassion towards other worlds.

The warrior’s words were very direct. Not quite the fool, Brandon conceded the point after another sigh.

But at that very moment, the black-haired boy tugged at the corner of the warrior’s shirt. Joshua looked down towards Ling, before following the youth’s finger that was pointing towards a corner of the sealing tomb.

There, radioactive cracks shaped like spiderwebs were expanding soundlessly. The ancient holy rune circuits were spreading across the entire tomb very steadily, albeit not quickly.

The warrior could tell that the entire ruins was about to crumble following the destruction of the Evil God Fragment. The core of the seal, having lost the outlet where it channeled its energy, was swiftly self-destructing. In no time at all, the whole colossal ruins beneath Mount Mordus would crumble in its entirety. If it were an ordinary person, they would probably be darting for the exit by now.

However, even the weakest individuals who were now within the ruins were Gold-tier champions. As such, neither Joshua nor Brandon were in a hurry—indeed, the warrior merely swept his gaze at the cracks, before saying nonchalantly, “I’m a little tired from my fight with Herlas. It’s all yours, Brandon.”

Coincidentally, the blond swordsman who just ascended into Supreme and felt the world becoming much clearer and detailed was raring to test out what powers he now possessed in his new state.

“Leave it to me!” He laughed heartily.

Outside the sealing tomb, Vale Dani and Gold-tier champions of the seven other influential factions were waiting outside the threshold of the obsidian door.

When Joshua ‘opened’ it—by tearing down the entire door—the entrance was barred by an incomparably sturdy energy shield. Although the people outside could hazily observe the glinting radiance within, they could not feel the energy ripples or hear the sounds inside.

The Gold-tier champions present were no pushovers, with each of them having their own titles. Even leaving aside the Council of Seven, the Skypiercing White Tower as well as the other elite spellcasters of the Imperial Royal Mage Guild, the Eye of Kaiser, and Bucktooth adventurers were elite exploration teams in the Eastern Plains with a reputation of supreme standard in the professional standard. Even the Bladed Wyvern and Blue Shield Mercenary groups were hired by the royal family of a certain nation in the West Mountains—their leaders were also the top few even amongst the Gold-tier champions in the entire continent.

Vale Dani herself was a war mage of the highest level, receiving tutelage from the Supreme spellcaster Nostradamus and owned many precious tomes to study from in her home. The Scarlet family property also spared the violet-haired mage from having to budget her research funds like other spellcasters, able instead to do any experiment she liked.

In short, the abilities of this group of people were at the point where a single individual picked randomly from them could give multiple normal Gold-tier a good trashing.

Still, even if that was the case, all of them were helpless against the energy shield. Be it the ‘Manabreaker Awl’ the White Tower employed to break all kinds of seals and shields, or the ‘Dispel Wave’ the West Mountain psykers held, all had no effect against that single layer of thin, translucent energy coating. All they could do was look at the blinding radiance that seemed to be shockwaves from a battle behind the shield, and then at each other.

“Why can those two kids go in but we can’t?”

A burly man with a giant hammer in his hand scratched his head, baffled, before uttering a curse when he looked at his rather deformed weapon. “Bullshit, am I weaker than two teenagers?”

Naturally, he was referring to Ling and Ying—who, unlike the Gold-tier champions present, were divine armaments that the warrior summoned. Still, since they could tear apart dimensional barriers, energy shield most certainly would not stop them.

After trying many times and ascertaining that he definitely could do nothing, a mage from the Imperial Royal Mage Guild also put down the magic staff in his hand.

“Kids?” He murmured softly, shaking his head as he turned to look at the burly man. “They’re not kids… Those are the incarnation of the count’s weapons.”

At that, he stopped his companion from attempting to break the shield. “It’s fine. If the Count of the North has entered, whatever is sealed inside will be smashed into dust.”

His words were convincing. The other Gold champion from the Royal Mage Guild though about it, before withdrawing his own staff and waited in a corner for the fight inside the tomb to end.

Along the way, apart from the wall relief and the rune circles unique to an ancient era, none of them had discovered anything worth collecting or studying. Some of the Gold champions had completely believed in what Vale Dani told them—that the ruins beneath Mount Mordus was only a prison to seal a dangerous object.

Such a thing was not rare after all. There were also many ruins from the ancient era in the West Mountains regions, and while most were ordinary ruins, some held the seals of powerful demons or Chaos monsters, causing much havoc when teams of adventurers explored them.

“Damn it, to think that there would have been some huge discovery!”

Following the example of the two Gold-tier spellcasters from the Royal Mage Guild, every other Gold-tier champion too gradually stopped testing the shield. One of them, a swordsman wearing beast leather armor and appear to have some barbarian blood, spat out half a tooth that was covered in blood.

‘Never thought that the first sizeable ruins in the North would be a seal,” he seethed. “And there are so many crazy cultists, it’s a real damn waste.”

Due to the ambush from the Pestilence cultists, every faction there dealt varying losses. Though there were not many casualties amongst the Gold-tier champions, there were heavy losses amongst the intermediates—the Silver tiers.

Furthermore, while the inspector teams composed entirely of elite mages, along with elite adventurers of the Eye of Kaiser were relatively fine, the Blue Shield and Bladed Wyvern mercenaries were almost wiped out. It should be known that the stampede of Blasphemous Spider-Demons and Giant Abyssal Demon were not something the mercenaries’ crude combat formations could withstand.

Nevertheless, the moment the barbarian swordsman who was almost dealt a light wound spat his tooth on the ground, a colossal reverberation erupted. Innumerable fissures spread like lightning towards every direction with the sealing tomb at its center.

In a split second, sand and stone spilled as boulders after boulders rumbled as they dropped alongside steel shards. The barbarian swordsman stared blankly upwards at the shaky stone ceiling, mumbling, “Surely not? My tooth is that powerful?”

Even as he joked, the Gold-tier swordsman was not once startled by what happened. With a flash of his sword, some of the huge plummeting boulders were turned into dust and blown away by his aura. The other Gold champions too activated their own skills, holding off the crumbling body of Mount Mordus as they sprinted for the exit.

Gold-champions do not fear mountains collapse. Even when caught within the mountain, they could simply dig out a passageway—but nobody likes being buried.

Vale Dani stood in front of the doorway, not retreating with the other Gold-tier champions and stubbornly waiting for her husband to return. The violet-haired mage naturally knew that with Brandon and Joshua’s ability—save for a Legendary opponent—none on this world would hold against them combined. Nonetheless, her heart was ill at ease, for she wished to see the blond swordsman appear before her own eyes.

Her wish was fulfilled at the very next moment.

A green flash from a swinging sword shot towards the sky and surged like a stretching river, blowing away the energy shield that more than ten Gold-tier individuals could not puncture for a long time. Starting from the depths to the peak, it broke Mount Mordus apart, forming a passageway headed directly outside the summit.

The people that the light touched along its way were not damaged by the horrendous power. Intrinsically manipulated, the energy flow evaded each person perfectly, sweeping away all stone and debris. Then, it shot upwards with a booming tremor. When a Gold-tier champion looked up, he shockingly found that the Moldovan sky that was filled with gloomy clouds had already appeared before him, with the late-night moon setting from a single crack amongst the cloud layers, incidentally shining upon Mount Mordus that was now split in two.

A single sword swing broke the mountain!

Brandon unleashed his full strength, the scene where the Third Holy Apostle divided the world and slashed down on the Evil God’s tentacle still fresh in his mind. Using the exquisite learning ability of Skill Mastery to cut Mount Mordus in two along with the crumbling ruins, forming a stretching passageway.

Following the blond swordsman as he walked out the sealing tomb, Joshua stopped minding Brandon as he went into an embrace with the violet-haired mage, and merely led Ying and Ling ahead on the smooth rock passageway created by the flash of a sword.

[Evil God of Air]

Joshua was pondering the information he acquired from the illusion.

Even though that haggard man who called himself the Third Apostle did not speak much, the information he revealed was much more than Joshua imagined.

Firstly, it was the number of Evil Gods.

Starting from the most powerful one Nolan mentioned—[Fertility] that ranked first, up to the provisionally named [Air] that was named as the thirteenth, the Mycroft Civilization had at least encountered and did battle against thirteen Evil Gods in the Glorious Era.

Next was the Chaos Research Institution that had never arrived.

Once more, according to the Third Apostle, it could be surmised that there were organizations that had specialized in researching Chaos—even Evil Gods on Mycroft at the time. Reasonably their reaction speed should be very fast, but even after successors had constructed a large-scale sealing ruins upon the seal the Third Holy Apostle left behind, it could still be seen that the Chaos Research Institution never arrived. They must have met something unexpected and so terrible that one Evil God fragment was not properly stored, being left behind lackadaisically in the North instead.

And the last was the Third Holy Apostle himself.

Joshua could not help touching his own chest at the very thought, feeling the Azurite that had fused into his body.

A historical clip he watched that was verified by the system itself appeared in his mind.

––Thousands and thousands of years ago, the Sage had found the Azurite buried deep within the depths of the Bottomless Abyss. He then gave it to the Third Apostle, while handing him the mission to calm the tide of Chaos and seal the entrance to the Abyss. After the Battle of the Fallen, the Azurite vanished from the sight of mortals, while the legacy of the Chaos Guardian continued without a word.

The Azurite and the Chaos Guardian were of course, the legacy of the Third Holy Apostle. Therefore, Joshua himself could be the heir of the Third Holy Apostle in this life.

“Is that a coincidence?” The warrior asked himself in his heart.

But before he could continue thinking about it, Joshua abruptly noticed that the Azurite on his chest was reacting in resonance.

Subconsciously turning his head, the warrior turned towards Brandon and the sealing tomb that was split in two. However, he immediately discovered that the source of resonance was neither the blond swordsman nor the seal behind him, but something in front of him.

Turning back, Joshua looked towards a spot nearby where pale-blue dimensional ripples were spreading towards its surroundings slowly, before a streak of pure radiance penetrated the surging dimensions.

A white-haired elder with a kind and ancient face appeared before Joshua; his hand carrying the Bright Scepter that was spreading warm light.

“Just a few days apart, Joshua,” he said with a gentle voice. “And you’ve become stronger again.”

Igor, the current pope of the Church of Seven Gods, had arrived in the North.