Soul of Searing Steel

The sun was setting, leaving a long, vast dark-red arc over the horizon.

Black, Heir of Ancient Dragon Bloodline and a young dragon declared by Count Radcliffe to possess Legendary talent, was now lying down at the vast wilderness of the western Dark Forest Fortresses. Her body was without strength, her eyes leveled blankly at the skies as she watched the last rays of the setting sun while thinking about life.

Having gone through another difficult training under high-gravity environments, the black dragon girl who simply did not want to move could not hold back the sadness welling from her heart.

“I should have stayed as a mere war steed…”

“Even if I changed bloodlines, aren’t I just a dragon?”

“Furthermore, Master never rides me—what use is there for me to improve?! He flies faster than a I do, can carry heavier things, is much powerful and see further than I do. Does my training even have meaning… Argh, it’s more annoying the more I think, I’m so angry!”

“Ding-dong~”

Just as the black dragon girl descended into her routine self-doubt and self-loathing after each daily regime, a clear jingle echoed. A stream of water thus descended from the skies, splashing on Black’s body that was emanating extreme heat and burning the ground dry.

Sizzle —Steam hissed as a luminous orb happily shot down from the skies into the vapor, jamming itself precisely between the black dragon girl’s two horns.

“Urgh… In the end only Light loves me… You’re the best!”

Feeling the heat spreading from her excessive training being absorbed by the orb on her head while it also sprayed cooling airflow to heal her injuries. Black was at once moved—struggling to get up, she plucked Light off her head as it jingled, giving it a bear hug and caressing it.

“And you feel so good to the touch!”

It had been some time since Light had joined the family. With Joshua’s ability improving, its once mysterious form and existence could be unraveled, solving questions such as how it sustained itself and why it especially enjoyed Black’s company.

Being a composite form of pure energies, Light would absorb energies from the world around it, and cherished high-energy environments like fairies. It would follow Joshua whenever the warrior was around and fed on the pure Steel Strength flowing off him, and would choose Black’s company in his absence since she was the only one with a solid body and emanates energies instead of absorbing it.

Having awakened her Smelting Black Dragon bloodline, Black would discharge substantial energies even if she cared to control it deliberately. It was Light’s favorite energy source, and it certainly did not merely consume—whenever Black trained too excessively, it would affectionately heal her in return as if an angel.

Even so, those sharp individuals in the Liege’s Residence notwithstanding, Black, who was actually often slow on the uptake and often hold Light in her embrace could not help feeling puzzled after living together for a long time and witnessing its growth.

Lifting the luminous orb, Black angled it sharply at the horizon where the last rays of the sun was vanishing. As pale silver radiance and dark twilight reflected as one, it illuminated the orb’s core even more clearly.

There, within a layer of near solid energy, a little silver vortex swirled inside Light’s core.

“Why is your form so familiar, Light?”

***

“Why is your form so familiar?”

Starfall Year 840, the 20th of April—an afternoon in the Bloodmoon Abyss.

Joshua stood outside the Blood Moon that was about turn into a sun while muttering quietly to himself, “That’s not just it either. Even your essence is familiar… Every soul of a world, a composite of all civilizations and every living species, and with the peoples fooled, leading to a vengefulness of having your world destroyed—just look at that massive vortex of souls. O Light, speak.”

“Why are you so similar to Evil Gods.”

On the massive floating continent in the Bloodmoon Abyss, a towering blood-colored tree that grew to the skies was growing fertilely.

One-fourth of the Blood Lake that was vast enough to be an ocean was shaded by the mutating Lifetree, its massive roots anchoring the continent’s structure while leaves that dropped intermittently stirred certain rivers in the lake.

A bright sun thus hung above that tree, providing substantial energy, light, and heat perpetually.

Joshua stood between the tree and the sun—in other words, at the center of the Blood Moon, smiling helplessly since the human silhouette of light did not appear to understand him.

“Right. You’ve never seen an Evil God, nor could you understand what I speak of.”

He mumbled softly as his expression returned to normal. “What’s more, instead of saying that you resemble Evil Gods, it would be more correct that Evil Gods resemble you.”

***

Xillia, the former form of the Bloodmoon Abyss was a world of floating islands. Its civilization was dying as its sun gradually dulled, every race nearing their demise. In desperation, they dispatched a Void warship in an attempt to obtain aid from foreign races, or at least transport seeds of their own civilization to prevent complete extinction if push came to shove.

In the end, there was no telling if they were lucky—they had indeed encountered a ‘friendly’ Void civilization and obtained a way of salvation. Due to their weakness, the Xillian civilization had no choice but to follow the measure suggested by that seemingly benevolent Void civilization and began the ritual to revive the sun.

Thus, they ‘became’ the sun.

Information Joshua gathered later indicated that the Xillian civilization had encountered the Black Fog, which apparently did not conquer by violence all the time, instead using simple deception to cause an entire civilization’s self-destruction, forming a blood-colored star of pure energy. However, the Black Fog did not recover the composite of energy and soul—it was only thousands of years later when the Pentashade dragons and the demons set their eyes on the powerful assemblage of energies.

They would attempt to use its power to break open the portal to Mycroft, accomplishing an Abyssal ritual and thus removing the Seven Gods Church, the greatest thorn to their side from the equation. The rest, however, was history—Joshua arrived seemingly ignited the blood star that had been dormant over millennia, granting rebirth to the composite of an entire world’s souls, energy and life, thus forming the frame of a World Will.

In truth, that process differed greatly to the birth of actual Steel Pythons. Being one who often conversed with Steel Pythons such as Karlis, Joshua was naturally aware that the birth of Steel Python requires an intelligent civilization as its foundation, or dead souls if need be.

Xillia, however, did not have intelligent civilization, while all the dead souls its hosted condensed into a singular form. Logically speaking, a Steel Python should not have been born so quickly.

Reality, however, made things irrefutable. Even Light had appeared, how could they not exist? But even as Karlis pondered and considered if there were multiple possibilities that could lead to a Steel Python’s birth, an idea occurred in Joshua’s mind.

Light’s true form was no orthodox Steel Python, but another unique species.

Just think about it: a civilization destroyed, a world perished, the vengefulness of being fooled and the despair of being fused into one body… And with the boundless gathering of energy and souls, the process and conditions were essentially identical to how Evil Gods were born!

Naturally, Joshua was also certain that Light was no Evil God. The single difference between Light and Evil Gods was that a mysterious power had perhaps interfered with the birth of the latter kind. Light’s creation was merely ‘similar’ through coincidence… although similarity alone was enough for the world.

If normal beings who had no magical power wrote a word identical to a run, that word would hold magical power too. Likewise, normal beings without Aura could use certain fighting skills if their lifeforce naturally followed the same procedure.

Magical hexes and martial arts were all tools created to mimic true Extraordinary power techniques. Even if undeliberate, users could create the same outcomes as long as the method was the same.

Therefore, Light was likely an Evil God.

However, it was one unexpectedly created, unsullied by Chaos, cleansed of hate or despair, without any decree for destruction or conflict written into it—a pure and natural Evil God.

Nevertheless, it was a weird way to put it: how could an Evil God be called an Evil God if it embodies no Chaos, hate or despair, and not even have the tendency to destroy civilizations? Indeed, it was much appropriate to describe it as an Abyssal Will.

That being said, being the dead souls of a world resurrected into a sun that illuminates the world, the revived Bloodmoon Abyss was essentially a World Inner reincarnated.

***

Meanwhile, Light’s true form—the luminous human silhouette did not understand nor care about what Joshua was saying. It merely happily split out a beam, shining it on Joshua’s scalp.

“Thanks.” Joshua looked up and grinned feebly, sensing that the energies around him were becoming concentrated. “There’s no need for that, I’m just here to visit you.”

Come to think of it, Joshua never really visited a normal world after it died naturally.

Not even the Glorious Era Archives recorded anything about that.

A while ago, the warrior had even specially asked about Karlis about that, only to find out that it did not know either.

“How long could a world live? Even without the existence of civilizations, it would not be unusual for to live for an ordinary primitive world to live for from hundred million up to billions of years, or perhaps until its star expired.”

That was what Karlis said meekly as it coiled around the warrior’s shoulder. “In fact, that is how some dead worlds came to be: their sun having exhausted itself and all primeval lifeforms thus extinct. On the other hand, any worlds with existing Steel Pythons or was civilized would be destroyed in war or for any other reason before that day arrived… which in turn was how Abyssal realms came to be.”

No one knew how a normal world would end up after the intelligent beings living in it perished. Joshua believed that the world would disintegrate by itself and become part of the Great Mana Tide’s energy, whereas its Steel Strength would float off and gather somewhere such as the Void Vortex, awaiting the day it would be reborn as a world.

At present, however, it appears that such worlds would end up like Light: every former life and soul combining into one body, reborn as the sun in a single reincarnation cycle.

Like [Eternity], destruction and rebirth were unnecessary, a perpetual wheel that comes full circle.

“[Eternity]… Haha. So, this counts too?”

Joshua could not help but smile at his own thought. “Why would I have such an idea? If such reincarnation is eternity, what wasn’t eternal in this world? The aspect that soul memories are emptied and altered alone was different from Evil Gods already.”

As an entity that was also created from a world will and combined with infinite souls, Evil God would at least retain the memories of those souls. Those memories were its information barrier, multitasking as the base unit of its core structure.

When it came to eternity, they were near indestructible. It was almost impossible to kill an Evil God, but thought the lived long—even longer than worlds, they were neither invincible or immortal to live forever, and hence was considered ‘half-eternal’.

Of course, even if that was the case, it was much closer to [Eternity] than any being the world.

Nevertheless, Joshua had a sense of familiarity and déjà vu in his head that he simply could not dismiss, and yet could not make the connection for the time being. He hence gave up on thinking, entering the Bloodmoon Abyss to play with the luminous human form and entertain it.

Whatever the case may be, regardless of how similar was Light’s essence to Evil Gods, it was now the light and warmth of a newborn world, symbolizing brand new future and hope.

If he could, Joshua would purify other Gods into Light’s current state. Though impossible and unachievable by any means, he could not stop himself thinking along those lines… Even if the Evil Gods that were born from vengefulness, despair, and sadness were to be destroyed, the mist and gloom that hangs over the world would not be dispelled.

It is only by reverting them into a fiery flame that they could illuminate the dark Multiverse once again.

Turning into a thousand-meter tall Giant God, the warrior stroked the luminous human’s long hair that resembled ribbons of light, its soft touch making him beam in relaxation.

Then, Joshua’s smile suddenly froze.

‘Wait, ‘ he thought,  ‘hold on.’

If the steps in which Evil Gods were created is similar to what Light had gone through, that is to condense a world’s souls, life and energy into a massive solid body…

Then…

The storied Bottom of the Abyss, where infinite Steel Shards had gathered, thereby assembling the despair, torment, and hate of infinite worlds, not to mention being a place composed of boundless lost souls… it was a ‘Paradise’ like no other.

It was the darkest place of eternal oblivion in the entire Multiverse, the place where the Sage did battle against the Evil God of Fertility.

Would it not be the greatest breeding place where Evil Gods were most likely to be born?!