Soul of Searing Steel

In the Beam System, the Midgardians whose psionic monitoring systems had been destroyed by the series of high-yield explosions, simultaneously discovered the Void Mother whom they could now see directly with their own eyes.

Its behemothic body ablaze, terrific detonations had torn its living composition into pieces. The Void Mother’s crumbling shell, along with its thick fluids and blood were dispersing across all directions in space. Even so, while its comically shattered crescent moon shape got a few laughs, it still conjured a deep chill within.

The battle between the Void Beings and the extended pursuit was about to reach its end. They had chased each other all the way from the edge of the Beam System to the Sea God Star orbit in the center, destroying countless little asteroids with their shockwaves through it all. Inconceivable energy aftershocks and massive amounts of space waste were spread in every heading, perhaps drawn by gravity from other Beam System planets, forming a new trail amidst the stars.

Even so, the battle was not over for the Midgardians yet.

Tarquin, the Commander of the Central Midgardian Fleet stood before the bridge, the psionic observation platforms that were arranged three-hundred and sixty degrees before him allowing him to view the situation in space without any blind spot. With the old Midgardian could see with his own eyes the dark blue Sea God Star to the rear, while the optical instruments that aided him in making out the distant ferocious appearance of the Void Mother.

It was a bundle of flesh that floated in the thick of space, a broken, breathing toxic cyst. Its crescent body was moving rapidly across vacuum, drawing out a long green haze of blood. He could see clearly that the Void Mother’s shattered dark shell was incessantly closing itself and sealing itself as green flesh squirmed. Boundless lymph nodes and cartilage constructs were piling together like rubbish after being severely incapacitated by explosions, and yet remained connected to the main body, seemingly intent on regenerating. Instead of describing it as a living creature, it was much more a gigantic anomaly of a flesh orb—compared to a living mothership, it resembled a pestilence tumor given form and spreads incessantly.

“So that’s the face of the Void Mother, huh.”

Having seen footage of the behemoth from the Mother Tree, Tarquin looked up at the ugly Void interloper that was still larger than their fleet after losing half of its body. “It is heavily injured,” he said quietly, his eyes reflecting light of the starry ocean. “The reinforcements we prayed for from the Void Door Ritual are truly powerful, but it should be their limit.”

No one believed that the two beings who had descended from the Door to be weak, having done much better than the Midgardian could imagine. Destroying almost half of the Void Mother’s body? It was an impossible task even with every Midgardian warship and fortress combined.

“Commander, it’s ready.” Following a series of footsteps, the middle-aged Midgardian informed the commander with a voice in which his excitement was clearly suppressed. “The Psionic Cohesive Vacuum Engine from the Mother Planet had been successfully equipped—we can begin anytime.”

“Then begin charging,” Tarquin replied with a calm and unaffected voice, turning towards his chief officer. “It’s what we came for after traversing a few lightyears.”

“Yes, sir.”

The middle-aged Midgardian left with the order for assault, while the old Midgardian remained on the observation platform, staring into the dark universe.

There was no tree that only grew leaves on one flank, which was why no organization would pour all resources to one single plan. While the Void Door summoning was a final resort after the Midgardians fell into despair, powerful officials including Milhabus and Tarquin would not hold any expectations for the beings beyond the Void. It would naturally be a good thing if they could help fend off the Void Mother, but if they could not, it did not exceed the worst-case scenario.

Apart from conducting that ancient ritual once more, the Midgardians had another countermeasure—the superweapon built simultaneously at the Midgardian Mother System and her colonies.

It had been millions of years since the Midgardians awakened psionic power, and two thousand years since they renounced their instinctive usage of that energy, choosing to use wisdom and rationality when applying it. They developed limitless psionic abilities across land, sea, and stars, but only invented warship shields, psionic luminous lances, starfighters or warp engines within a millennium—in the millennium after, despite the Midgardians using a long time to recover from severe blows, they should have some level of development.

And now, the development was given form. ‘That’ which had been created deep within the Midgardian Mother Planet fortress and the center of the Sea God Star Fortress, although it could not be activated since its energy requirements exceeded projections. For that, the Midgardian high command decisively ordered the Midgardian Fortress to unequip their part of the engine and have the Central Fleet transport it by warp to arm it on the Sea God Star Fortress. With two Fortress-class engines supplying energy and half the Fleet’s energy aid, the superweapon could finally operate smoothly and target the enemy from outside the Mother Planet.

‘Beep—’

A shrill alarm echoed as the monitor screens promptly vanished. Streaks of red light illuminated the Pioneer —the flagship of the Central Midgardian Fleet, but Tarquin was not surprised. He was aware that the emergency alarm came as a result of the energies from the ship’s engine core being drained into another large equipment, while maintaining the warship so that it operated below standard level. It was not just the Pioneer either since every warship from the three Colony Fleets were congregating their power too.

Congregating upon their hope.

Just in front of the orbit of the Sea God Star Fortress, the Midgardian Fleet began to spread their ranks out of their umbrella-like formation, facing the Void Mother that had been plastered with severe wounds. The vanguard main force retreated in an orderly fashion, revealing the object they had been concealing all along—a colossal rhombus-shaped octahedron that was over ten kilometers. There was a layer of transparent psionic crystals shrouding one side of the gigantic metallic creation that was covered in pale silver coating, but it became no longer crystalline as waves of monumental energies passed through it, turning as bright as the blue radiance of the sky instead.

It was incessantly charging, while carrying along thousands of psionic bolts that burst forth in vacuum. When it was almost charged, the gigantic rhombus octahedron also slowly changed its shape—in seconds, its front tip shrunk into a protruding hole, with a see-through spherical focal lens inserted in its center, connected to the psionic crystals that were charging without stopping. Now, the lens was completely filled with silver-blue psionic energies, revealing the single starry speck of light within.

On the bridge of the battleship, a silver-blue ray concentrated to its very limits shone from the direction of the Sea God Star Fortress and pierced space itself. It had no heat, momentum or even energy signature, and simply shot the Void Mother’s body at lightspeed even as the monster kept flying towards the Fortress. At that moment, Joshua, who had been following the Void Mother’s trail widened his eyes, not quite understanding what was happening despite witnessing the strike which the Midgardians had held back for long.

A psionic ray without any heat or impact force? What are the Midgardians doing, giving the Void Mother some light?

Dispelling the mirthless thought, Joshua’s mind could not help coming up many other guesses, such as attempting to control the Void Mother psionically in its weakened state, especially with its mind hub being dealt a heavy blow. It was not applicable as well—the Void Mother’s spiritual prowess was so profound that it would enter a stalemate against the combined psionic powers of all Midgardians. To pit just two fleets against it? Prideful.

Joshua had many other hypotheses at first, but soon, when the real intentions of the Midgardians were revealed, he promptly gaped at them, killing every other thought.

“Warping!”

And it certainly was.

As Joshua exclaimed the word in surprise, the dimensions undulated with a stronger force than when the Void Mother opened its portal to move through planetary systems, and bombarded the Void Mother’s body with silver-blue psionic rays. In that instant, the ‘Psionic One-Dimensional Space’ that the Midgardians used to travel the stars and colonize the universe opened directly, a space that was thousands time larger than warship warp engines could create consumed more than half of the Void Mother’s defenseless physicality, forcing it to warp into Psionic Space!

In that instant, Joshua finally understood what technique the Midgardians had kept beneath its treasure chest—a warp equipment that could teleport a behemoth object over ten kilometers large!

A thousand years ago, the Midgardians had possessed warp engines that could bring colony ships to other star systems and allow them to formally advance into an era of planetary colony, but precisely because of that, they discovered the deficiencies of their warp engine.

The weight it could carry was too low.

Their most advanced engines at the time could only teleport warships that were less than three thousand meters—there would be teleportation mishaps if larger crafts were moved due to the narrowness of psionic space. Therefore, in each new planet that the colony ships arrived in, they must utilize the resources from their own ship to construct a colony. The Mother Planet would have to consume huge amounts of energy even if it wanted to send help, and hence a new colony could barely be built after hundreds of warships made round trips, consuming inestimable amounts of Psionic Energy in the process. Thus, they began to undergo warp research for colossal objects.

The Midgardian civilization had stagnated for some time after their severe losses following the Crystal Insect incident—including research in relations to the mass teleportation. However, the research yielded delighting results when it restarted recently albeit left unannounced due to incompleteness and the inability to create a safe warp point. But now, the civilian tool that was used to transport an entire colony fleet had completely been altered into a military weapon, while its flaw of unsafe teleportation hence became its advantage.

Now, in space, the Void Mother had distinctly and abruptly lost more than half of its body as if it was removed by an eraser. After pausing briefly, its remaining body started to squirm wildly and painfully. Most of its mass had now been sent into Psionic space, torn away from what scarce few was left of it. It was a keen edge shaped from space—all matter would not be able to withstand its cut, even if it were the Void Mother, a minion serving the Evil God of Pestilence.

Even so, things were not yet over. If that had been a normal teleportation just now, the Void Mother’s body had simply been siphoned away and require a long time to recover, and yet would still return one day after devouring other beings and matter before returning to exact vengeance upon the Midgardians. But both Tarquin and the weapon designer had thought about it—therefore, with an easy smile on the old Midgardian’s face, silver-blue dimensional undulation appeared once more.

It was no portal formed from successful warp, but an exit point from Psionic Space, where matter was expelled!

How could a weaponized grand-scale warp tool teleport successfully? Any matter engulfed in Psionic Space would be diced into a thousand pieces by the spatial fissure that was akin to sharp edges into particles invisible to the naked eye! It was the outcome the Midgardians ascertained thousands of years ago when they saw what was left of their warship after the first failed warp—the Void Mother was definitely no exception!

‘—We may have created a really great weapon.’

The thought suddenly flashed through Tarquin’s mind. The superweapon, named as the ‘Sub-Space Breaking Cannon’ by the technical division, had the force to instantaneously shatter a gigantic asteroid. It did not matter how tough the matter or shield was—after forced into warp and cut apart by the spatial fissure caused by the failed warp, anything would be left grain-sized. No fleet would have a countermeasure against such a weapon either. Unless they had especially developed anti-warp armaments, they would not be able to even defend themselves.

As the old man sunk into thought, the radiance of failed warp dispersed. While endless spatial fissures spread like spiderwebs, clusters of dark-green flesh dropped out of silver-blue Psionic Space—the scraps from the Void Mother’s body after it had been slit apart thousands of times.

“Success!”

“We did it!

“Dear Saint! We have finally passed the trial you have given us!”

“Rubbish, why would the Saint give us such a demanding test? It is revenge which the Saint’s nemesis had exacted upon us!”

“Seventy-seven percent of the Void Mother’s body had been cut away by Psionic Space, all vigor lost! Wait, why is there still a little?”

At the center of the vast Sub-Space Breaking Cannon control room, countless technicians were giving each other high-fives, cheering with a face full of tears in a merry manner for the impending victory. The overt delight and excitement also caused a brief disturbance—a researcher had even carelessly pressed a button and turned off some lights, causing an uproar. Despite that, a technician’s doubtful musing swiftly dampened the celebratory atmosphere, and everyone gathered behind him to look at the information detailed in the psionic screen in front of him.

“Clear psionic reaction… the Void Mother’s psionic core had produced a shield to keep the space surrounding it stable—it’s not shattered!”

“That’s the cannon’s weakness! If the enemy wields an equally powerful psionic power, it might force a successful warp instead of being torn apart!”

The atmosphere became elated again. Everyone knew that the Void Mother that had lost its flesh was no longer a foe of the Midgardians even with its core left. It might even become their spoils of war, a research subject for developing their civilization to the next level.

Meanwhile, Joshua was hurrying towards the scraps of Void Mother that had seemingly lost all life signs, shaking his head forcefully.

“Wrong! While that superweapon definitely surpassed my imagination, would the Void Mother die from a blow such as a physical cut?!”

It was a superior lifeform integrated from a Nanovirus!

Body being torn apart? Losing great mass? Flesh being cut to scraps? Were such things even meaningful against the minion of the Evil God of Pestilence? Even Slimes would not die after being cut apart, much less a being of chaos! It is only by the million-degrees heat psionic luminous lances to turn incinerate all those scraps into ash that it counted as destroying it! The Midgardians’ superweapon was at most dismantling the form of the Void Mother and reducing its mass, and only that!

Just as the radiance that the Midgardian superweapon condensed slowly vanished, the seemingly lifeless flesh began to move a little. With the psionic core at its center, the pieces began to reassemble—an inconspicuous action that virtually did not exist to the Midgardians that were far away and only had optical instruments. But to Joshua and his Steel Strength vision, it was extremely obvious.

He even saw a scientific research craft detaching from the Midgardian fleet, heading towards the Void Mother scraps.

The Void Mother was definitely maimed again, but it still lives—if the Midgardians acted carelessly, they are likely to face a backlash!

Still, if that was the case…

Joshua suddenly turned in the middle of his accelerated flight and looked towards the Sea God Star to the rear of the Midgardian Fleet—the blue gas giant was slowly whirling, eternally unchanging.

A wild idea suddenly appeared in his mind.

The true way to turn the Void Mother into nothingness.