Soul of Searing Steel

Panda Novel

The white light that resembled a supernova slowly diminished amidst the dark universe, while the gray debris that permeated all around dispersed with the shockwaves. Behind the dispersed clouds, the Void Mother’s behemothic body twitched like an invertebrate, squirming as it eroded that meteor which almost cut it in half. The aberration of was as if a monster from nightmares had arrived in the real world—thousands of towering tumors grew with sharp serrated teeth shaving away like chainsaws, and in seconds, the immeasurably sturdy and massive asteroid was churned by the Void Mother’s powerful appendages into nutrients and absorbed into its body.

At that moment, the Void Mother had no qualms in displaying its ferocious appearance that linked it to the Evil God of Pestilence. Incalculable compound eyes, shells, tumors briefly appeared as it squirmed, before covered by its streamline black shell and returning to its spindle shape.

The ejection just now—a high energy ray that could destroy the surface of a planet if prolonged appeared to have exhausted the Void Mother. It made no follow-up action after it had finished devouring the asteroid, since even an elite minion serving an Evil God would not be able to handle the exertion from revealing such a trump card. But whatever the case may be, it was a force that was above Legendary-tier sundering ray spells, a theoretical lance of light that exist in psionic civilization discourse, the prototype of what most civilizations called the star-destroyer cannons that could level planets.

Naturally, the Void Mother’s power was far from that threshold, but it definitely had the talent of laying waste to planets. If given time, it would one day become capable of holding against a galactic civilization by itself as it grew into a leviathan that fed on planets—even ancient empires would bend their knee in surrender before it or escape haggardly.

“…As expected of a Legendary monster that grew in space. Really underestimated you, huh.”

Standing off against Void Mother some distance away, Joshua was now calm. Even if Nostradamus appeared to have been evaporated by the enemy, it was but an appearance—the spiritual link connecting the warrior to the old mage was still there. He was aware that the archmage was dealt a heavy blow, his body thrown into disarray by concentrated energy and about to diminish, but he was unquestionably alive but unable to assist him at the moment, and could only pause by the edge of the battlefield to slowly recover his strength.

“A moment of carelessness… Joshua, I can’t team-up for the moment.” Nostradamus’s faint voice emanated from the spiritual link. His will appeared calm despite the heavy injury, and there were no traces of pity. “The energy stored in its body escaped my imagination—to think that it could unleash such fission magic without mustering itself… I’ll take a break and help you later.”

“It’s more than enough,” Joshua calmly replied, narrowing his eyes at the distant enemy. “Rest first, Master Nostradamus.”

The warrior was very thankful—it had originally been his and his task alone, yet Nostradamus helped him solved many hassling issues that would trouble him if he were alone such as the endless legions of Void aberrations or the unimaginably stalwart psionic gravity shield. The old mage had already helped the warrior with many troubling problems, which was why.

I myself am enough for the rest of the job.

In the orbital track of the asteroid field several hundred kilometers in front of Joshua, the spindle-shaped Void Mother began to shift abnormally again after devouring the asteroid. Streaks of openings revealed themselves over its thick chitin shell that were hundreds of meters thick, while layers after layers of psionic crystal veins appeared just like red stripes over the black body of the monster—the Evil God minion hence howled painfully and delightedly at once across the void, for it had acquired substantial rare minerals from the asteroid to rebuild its psionic shield. Now was precisely at its first step to reconstruct its defensive systems. Dark green psionic radiance, jumbled with dark-red crystalline colors were turning into filthy and Chaotic obscure illumination that shone over the surrounding planetary region.

As he looked on, Joshua took one step out from the asteroid belt where he stood. The four-armed giant’s body that had been motionless like a steel statue shrugged off a layer of eroded metal shards—steel shards that had rapidly aged due to vigorous combat and energy transference. Pieces of gray metal fragments over a dozen meters hence fell off the four-hundred-meter-tall giant’s body and hence turning into dust, and where they fell, layers of smooth but tough new shells reflected the glitter of distant stars, flickering a cool metallic luster across the stars.

Psionic light that crisscrossed in red and green, along with the cool metallic luster hence divided the space into two extreme opposites. Two profound energies surged in the darkness, the clashing illusions enveloping the light of all stars.

Just as that far off Void Mother could heal its own injuries by using the asteroids around it, Joshua could recover rapidly as well by absorbing the asteroid minerals around him. The only drawback being that it would take considerable periods of polish to perfect it in days to come, but such ability was already fine in wartime—one could not indulge themselves that much.

In the very next moment, as a golden light shone across space, the Void Mother that had cried out in delight quickly bellowed in rage instead with a voice that would tremble a small planet—for Joshua had turned himself into an incomparable meteor, charging wildly and crashing heavily on its outer shell!

A circle of spiderweb fissure that spread over thousands of meters hence abruptly appeared over the Void Mother’s dark, streamlined shell. Beneath that immense pressure, thousand tons of monster fluids shot out like a spraying gun towards all directions!

Draconic cries were alleged to shake mountains, reverse oceanic tides and quake the atmosphere, but in this very moment, the screams of pain from the Void Mother far eclipsed the high frequency sound waves of dragons. Its own waves of blood acting as a medium of sound, the small asteroids around the Void Mother’s body resonated and shattered into infinite fragments, while the psionic energies within the Evil God minion’s bodily fluids were also triggered into bolts of leaping energy lightning.

Yet all these imposing sights that could cause a fleet to tremble did not compare to the giant who stood above the Void Mother’s body!

At the center of the spiderweb-fissures over its shell, Joshua raised his right hand impassively, his body surrounding by circles of golden radiance. The silver greatsword was grasped with one hand but yet to be brandished, although buffeting winds were already engulfing the blood vapor and turning into a cyclone that rampaged across the environment, caused by the layers of dark red light that flowed around the edge of the great sword. Like the rapidly moving saw chains over a chainsaw, it was providing it with sufficient power to everything apart, with the gigantic shifting mass whirling around the edge of Steel Sword soon building into a peerless gravity vortex, causing space itself to tremble and distort.

Steel Sword: Chainsaw form.

In the vacuum, the vortex slammed down heavily but silently. It was as if a silver lightning had struck the body of the Void Mother, and within a breath, a giant bloody crater appeared over the surface of its body whereas dark green blood vapor shot out like fountains, turning into dozen-meter tall cyclones as well due to the drag of the gravity vortex from the chainsaw sword. It was precisely the reason the spiderweb fissures widened instantly—Joshua’s violent strength was like the most brutal scythe that sliced across the monster’s flesh, dicing its shell into warped chitin residue.

But that was about it. The anguished Void Mother quickly retaliated against the tiny being had had suddenly arrived over its body—to a gigantic lifeform which size was over ninety kilometers, a four-hundred-meter-tall giant was nothing but an ant. While its destructiveness was frightening, it was merely like clipping a thumb, painful but non-lethal, and far powerless compared to the asteroid strikes before.

Thus, in the blink of an eye, thousands of pink tentacles shot out from beneath the shell the warrior had broken. Each tentacle quickly hardened and was covered in a black layer in one-fifth of a second, their tips glinting with a luster as if a blade before volleying incessantly towards the Steel giant with the force of muffled thunder.

The tip of a whip brandished by humans would exceed supersonic speeds. Therefore, how fast and how hard was the tip of thousand-meter long tentacles in a volley flung by a colossal monster such as the Void Mother? Nobody knew, and neither did the Void Mother paid much attention to its black tentacles as it merely rapidly threw them pass the green fog formed by its own blood, drawing a deafening reverberation and shockwave as if a keen edge.

Joshua did not stop his own assault despite sensing that the enemy was coming. The silver greatsword in his four arms never ceased tearing into the Void Mother’s flesh, and within the seconds that its foe had brewed its countermeasures, he had already plunged a passageway that cuts a passageway of meat that was over several hundred meters deep beneath its shell.

However, before he could enter, the Void Mother came striking as fast as lightning. Without turning back, Joshua turned all three remaining arms towards them and threw thousands of illusory punches to block them all. The metallic fist easily tore apart the sturdy chitin tentacles, sending layers of dark shells flying. However, such aspects of victory did not affect the final outcome—since the warrior’s attention was split towards causing damage to the Void Mother’s actual body, the tentacles therefore had the advantage and struck true on their target.

Bang! A dull hit echoed. It was clear that the Void Mother knew how to learn from experience—unlike the large but soft tentacles it volleyed out before, these tentacles were very tough. Despite crumbling under the recoil from the Steel Strength the instant it struck Joshua’s body, it threw its full weight into Joshua, knocking the warrior swiftly away into the distance like a baseball that was struck, turning into a silver star.

But Joshua was not sent flying too far away—due to the extreme weight of this body, he had been sent flying close to the pathway from the Void Mother’s shell. And the instant he was struck, the warrior quietly brandished his great sword and stabbed it with no hesitation into the Void Mother’s shell, nullifying its strike with his own power.

Despite his swift response, his greatsword still dragged out a huge tear that was almost five kilometers long before finally stopping. The throbbing flesh, blood, and innards of the Void Mother were visibly throbbing beneath it and wrapped between viscous fluids and bloody bubbles, as well as tumors of unfathomable usage.

Noting that one accurate strike had no effect, endless tentacles reached out from the Void Mother’s body again along with thousands of sharp bone spikes. Like homing arcane missiles on the continent, the spikes devolved from tentacles flew automatically by locking on to the warrior’s energy signature, and each bore the impact force of the God’s Scepter spatial bombardment on a planet surface. However, such apparent physical blows were useless against the prepared warrior.

All Joshua did was looked around at the tentacles and bone spikes that swarmed towards him, before raising his great sword and swinging it through thin air from left to right. Vicious gravity hence spread, and the ever-present tentacles and spikes exploded into shards and blood vapors. Then, a huge hole blew into the dead center of the huge vapor layers as Joshua flew rapidly away, dispersing the vapors and returning to the wound where he had cut into the Void Mother.

Boom! With a dull thunderous echo, the warrior landed on the Void Mother’s shell once more. Even if the gaping spider-web wound and the cracked shell was rapidly regenerating as the Void Mother’s flesh squirmed below, it did not heal much in that short time. Taking a deep breath, Joshua continued his work from before and swung his sword to tear apart the wound—and unlike before, golden liquid was flowing out of the porcelain opening over his body and dripping over the monster’s body.

It was not as if the Void Mother’s attack did not hurt Joshua—it was merely indistinct.

The shell over the Steel giant was all ultra-dense substance formed from Steel Strength. However, his strength for defenses would be greatly lowered, since it tends to be diverted especially when the warrior chooses to attack. Even so, the flawless metals and unknown supreme alloys that formed the giant’s body would never be crushed by simple blunt force. His original body was perfect alloy, but the few pieces that recently regenerated was not, which hence cause irregular cracks in the spots where they were connected.

As Joshua swung his sword manically, streaks of thick, kilometer-long cyclones arose over the Void Mother’s body. At the same time, golden-red blood streamed out from his cracked shell, dripping over the Void Mother’s inner flesh and outer shell. However, the golden-red ‘blood’ bizarrely did not evaporate under the searing heat wafting from the furnace by the warrior’s chest, and burning instead like smelted irons over the multitudinous twisted flesh and tumors continuously with sizzling sounds, before finally melting them by layers and revealing the psionic nerves that flickered in black-green colors under it. They were a crystallized nerve assemblage, emitting psionic energies and capable of resisting the incineration by the warrior’s blood and truly catches Joshua’s attention, who in turn showed a thoughtful gaze.

In the very next moment, the Void Mother’s attack came once more—this time, it was not simple tentacles or bone spikes, but psionic luminous spheres and lances. Since its psionic crystal veins were healing, the Evil God minion could now use such energy attacks, raining kilometer-sized spheres in a suicidal manner towards where Joshua was.

The Void Mother was willing to hurt itself badly just to kill Joshua once and for all!

Without a word of nonsense, Joshua ducked into the Void Mother’s flesh the moment he saw the tremendous luminous spheres that were a notch bigger than the Great Ajax Volcano. He might love facing the enemy directly, but he was not a suicidal lunatic. Regardless, the many spheres and lances vanished immediately like a mirage once he entered the Void Mother’s wound, the psionic particles within reassembling as if alive into a stout cross-shaped psionic barrier.

Boom!

Controlling the psionic barrier that was almost solid, the Void Mother held it steadily over its own wound like a seal, emitting a giant quake. Thereafter, the monster which had been squirming promptly stopped its intense movements and hung motionless in the Void, redirecting every iota of attention to counter the enemy it had locked within its own body.

Blindsided? Sensing that the monumental psionic barrier had held himself within the Void Mother’s body, Joshua who now had no path of returned curled his lips in an expression as if he had known all along. The Void Mother’s thinking was as simple as a beast, the warrior had already guessed such a countermeasure would be used against him. Clearly, to purge the unknown variable that was him, the Void Mother was willing to pay a huge price to definitively destroy Joshua—but it made a mistake in overestimating the damage it could cause.

Never underestimate a Legend. Even if his size was a hundredth of his foe.

Laughing loudly for an instant, fusion sparks appeared beneath Joshua’s feet like red-hot needles that pierced deeply into the Void Mother’s body. It cut through thousands of meat barriers in seconds and breaking through chitin shell, iron cuticle skin, wiggling blankets of tumors and spawning compartments to arrive directly beneath the crust of that meaty planet, the genuine fragile body within!

Poof! Having broken through the final membrane—a sturdy, translucent sheet of cartilage, Joshua quickly felt himself dropping into water. He looked around, finding that he had arrived in a cavity formed from soft blood and tissue.

Still, arriving there did not mean the enemy was defenseless. Joshua knew for a fact that for such leviathans, the battle truly begins when they entered its vulnerable body—and in the thousandth of a second the warrior had reached that place, materialized psionic energies crashed down on Joshua like an avalanche as a glacier crumbled.

But before the raging torrents of psionic forces could touch the warrior’s body, all of it were blocked by a dark red translucent ripple over the warrior’s skin. Like the Mother Tree on the Midgardian home planet, the Void Mother’s psionic power was vast but sporadic, and Joshua could easily use his own power to cancel it. Still, the Void Mother decided to make up for quality with quantity. As its inner layers of flesh squirmed again, unending and inestimable amounts of psionic energy poured toward him like tidal waves, resembling an immune system that kept throbbing without stopping in the desire to expel a foreign organic construct as it tried to smash Joshua. Even if it could not remove that foul and hard piece of foreign object, it could at least expel it to its outer muscle layer.

The battle can happen within the Void Mother’s body, but not in such a deep core cavity!

In the instant the Void Mother’s psionic energy began a process similar to an excretory reaction, Joshua’s skin surface promptly changed into raging golden-red—his Nuclear Heart Furnace was unleashing powerful energies that dispelled the forces coming towards him in all directions, while million degrees of extreme heat shot out from every part of his skin, incinerating the enemy’s vulnerable innards cavity, charring dark green tissue into ash and utterly wiping away all signs of life inside the body of the Pestilence minion!

The excretory reaction was ultimately originated from organ and tissue, but since all of it were burnt, the countermeasures hence vanished like a puff of smoke. Even if some parts further away reacted, their violent psionic counterattack would never catch up to Joshua’s speed.

Still, such a burst of energy would not last too long. Even Joshua’s Azurite could not stand against such powerful energy resistance—his opponent here was the Void Mother alone, which was why he could not attain endless physical power by massacring legions of Chaos.

That being said, would the warrior have ventured so deep into the bowels of the Void Mother without preparing?

Certainly not.

Boom! The warrior swung the silver greatsword in his hand, tearing apart the Void Mother’s flesh as he flew at full tilt. While he resisted the psionic repelling around him, his three other fists were punching out away from three different directions. Like a heart and unstoppably vibrating and expanding monster flesh, dark red searing heat was spraying away from the warrior’s arm and burning all biological composition in the Void Mother’s body, revealing the psionic nerves behind. As if a beast, the warrior brutally pulled the nerves out along with huge chunks of body fluids and fresh blood.

Riiiip—Gluuuug —!!

As the sound of flesh being torn and organs being shattered echoed, the Steel giant wildly attacked the Void Mother’s inner body constructs while resisting the tremendous psionic repel. Even as he tore the enemy’s flesh apart viciously, Joshua’s expression never changed—he opened his mouth and bit ¹ savagely into the Void Mother’s crystallized psionic nerves, and with the clear crumpling sounds along with distinct gulping, Joshua’s eyes showed fearsome red light that flashed amidst the dark green psionic ocean inside the Void Mother’s body. Monumental energies hence began to flow from the warrior’s body, supplying the Steel giant to continue to fight.

Crack-crack!

Since swallowing was too slow and incapable of fulfilling the task to supply energy, Joshua stuffed the remaining crystal nerves into his Nuclear Heart Furnace. The golden vortex whirled wildly as it crushed those high-energy materials, converting it into energies that the warrior urgently needed.

The texture isn’t bad.

The movements of Joshua’s hand were not half-slow even as that thought crossed his mind. He never stopped brandishing his Steel Sword to create one gaping holes after another inside the Void Mother’s body, allowing his enemy’s bodily fluids and blood to surge and feel the holes as scabs. To the behemothic Evil God minion, the warrior was now no longer an unthreatening ant, but a bullet that never stopped advancing and damaging his body. The Void Mother’s body that had been pausing outside the asteroid belt began to whirl on the spot after having sensed the anguish, moving around erratically and flying around like a headless housefly within the system, its tentacles waving and dancing around like possessed villagers, volleying against the fragile asteroids around it.

At the same time, the crystal psionic nerves that Joshua had swallowed displayed an unprecedented reactivity—it was still alive after being crushed by his stomach that was similar to an atomic crusher, and had turned into endless crystal spores that latched within the warrior’s body and organ cavity, propagating like viruses. They were looking for organic forms, obsessed on invading those pathetic living cells and plunder the nutrients within for ‘themselves’, and finally taking Joshua’s talents and power for themselves just as they did to multiple Midgardian and Folbian colonies.

But this time, those Chaos viruses had truly struck an iron wall.

Inside Joshua body, there was not one bit of flesh and blood apart from boiling, smelted irons and skeleton formed out of degenerate matter.

—Nostradamus was heavily injured, which is just fine.

Sensing the despair of the spore and viruses within his body as they were crushed into pure high-energy substance by his stomach, Joshua maintained his resistance against the psionic impacts that came curling from all directions while devouring the psionic crystal nerves of the Void Mother. He thought coldly that his heart was as calm as the polar glaciers at the moment, or he would have to waste his breath explaining his current actions otherwise.

Joshua was much more an incarnation of virus, more than the minion of Pestilence. He had invaded the body of the Void Mother, and while it could resist Steel Strength assimilation, it could not handle physical damage. If a normal virus was compared to a robber that entered a house and plundered all property, Joshua was a bandit holding a hammer who flattens the entire house—a bastard that even eats away a part of the house!

Nevertheless, such ruthless action that was on the verge of madness from Joshua unquestionably made others felt uncomfortable.

“Master!” Ying shouted loudly with a worried expression in the warrior’s spiritual space. “Calm down, your mental state is a little unstable!”

“Divinity reaction detected!” Ying was saying loudly from another corner as well. The black-haired boy was doing his best to remind the warrior as they had previously agreed. “Master, don’t be dominated by divinity!”

As for the milky-white luminous orb, having seemingly affected by Joshua’s mood, had actually turned scarlet. It appeared intent on voicing something, but could not even muster a jingle due to its nervousness.

“I’m very calm,” Joshua said, now appearing more to be a monster than any existing monster.

As the Void Mother zoomed across the Beam System in anguish, intending to crash into some spot to soothe the agony within its body, the warrior’s three giant arms were pulling and tearing away at the psionic nervous system within the Void Mother’s body from front to back while huge sheets of fresh blood and fragments burst out, which he dragged off and threw into his mouth or the Nuclear Heart Furnace before his chest. The warrior’s eyes were glinting with red radiance akin to a demon god, but after he heard Ying and Ling’s words, he passed unwittingly for an instant.

Closing his eyes and opening them again, Joshua said softly, “This isn’t some divinity outburst.”

While the Void Mother’s psionic nervous system provided monumental energies, abundant but irresistible power wafted from Joshua’s body. Flexing his four arms and body, golden-red impact waves were spreading rampantly with him at its center. Great repulsive force and shifting mass combined to push away all psionic energy and fragile Void Mother flesh around him, turning into a sphere of vacuum because he had raised the silver greatsword. Thus, a long corridor of meat and blood directed straight toward the depths of the Void Mother’s body was opened even as its green blood, tissues, and innards splashed away.

Joshua looked coldly ahead at that dark and endless path of meat.

“It’s merely for victory. The willingness to do anything. By any means necessary.”

In the very next second, his body turned into a flow of golden light that pushed deep within the Void Mother’s body at full speed.

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