Soul of Searing Steel

[Platinum Heavens (Amelia Makarov) has updated her personal status]

[Mycroft Standard Time 18:44, October 3, year 846]

[Diplomatic mission complete! The Huards look just a bit ferocious but are actually quite gentle and well-spoken! (Images attached)]

[Location: unknown world in an unknown system within the Huard Galaxy, posted with 10th-generation Core Personal Spiritual Terminal (golden font)]

As the continuously-extending Mana Net Server of the Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds dutifully transmitted the message to the main server in the Zeta Ram System with a three hour delay and relayed it to other Spirit Terminals, replies from other users came in after around six hours.

[Platinum Sky (Ivan Makarov) has liked your updated status.]

[Brother (Note): Not bad!]

[Developing Multiverse Culinary (Nick the Dwarf) has liked your updated status.]

[Nick: Those goat-heads look like they’ll taste fine…]

[Karin has liked your updated status]

[Karin: Eh. Is everyone else is going to other worlds for missions while I stay alone at the Void installation?]

[Nick replied Karin: Yes, it’s you, only you, the one and only. The chosen one. The single sprout. The last survivor!]

[Nick’s reply was removed by Karin.]

[Nick was removed from friend list.]

[Nick was blacklisted.]

[….]

[Syndicate has liked your updated status.]

[Lisa has liked your updated status.]

[Lisa: Amelia, when should we meet up? Our last meeting was six years ago, and it is almost the ten-year anniversary since we’ve first met.]

***

Amelia had been sitting in a temporary room built for ambassadors to train her magic while furiously refreshing the Spirit Terminal and liking every reply. She could not help but be moved by Lisa’s suggestion.

Certainly, the last time every acolyte of Joshua van Radcliffe—Hell Count and God of Steel—had gathered in a feast was six years ago. Each other occasion would see someone missing, either for work, or when they were almost ready, left so troubled by some major incident involving their mentor that they would no longer have the time to think of such excesses. Just like the trans-galactic grand expedition over the last few years, with everyone so busy, there was no time for a gathering.

Now however was a fine moment. Aside from everyone being on this side of the galaxy, the rising development was slowing, and when Amelia formally completed her diplomatic mission over here, she could return to the Void installation to truly enjoy networking with zero delays—no, to meet up with everyone!

Though Priest was strictly speaking an apprentice taken in only in year 837, he had already been in their mentor’s sights by year 836, not to mention that it was the year when they were introduced to Lisa. There was no need for such pedantry, and they could just call it a ten-anniversary event if they wanted to.

Amelia’s lips curled up at the thought, and then focused her mind to reply through the Spirit Terminal… only for a ‘Special Attention’ notification to abruptly ring halfway through.

[Joshua van Radcliffe (Top Admin, Supreme Rainbow Hue ID) has liked your updated status.]

[Joshua: A gathering? Great. I’ll get Zero Three, Ling, and Ying to prepare. The rest of you will decide on the time.]

[Zero Three (Central Admin, Supreme Dazzling ID) has liked your updated status.]

[Zero Three: Alright!]

[Ying: (Admin, Noble Purple ID) has liked your updated status.]

[Ying: Yes, Sir!]

[Ling (Admin, Noble Purple ID) has liked your updated status.]

[Ling: I’ll get ready right away!]

With shock and awe, the hand with which Amelia held her necklace-shaped Spirit Terminal was shaking.

M-Master is joining too?!

Even if it was not actually a bad thing, that feeling was very much akin to parents or guardians intruding to a private gathering of their children, or classmates running into their homeroom teacher at the elven opera house…

Still, after taking a moment to calm down, Amelia realized that things were not as grim. Though all of them had vivid memories of their mentor’s excessively strict education, Joshua had actually been a generous teacher who would order his apprentices to run ten laps around Moldavia, then personally kill a dragon himself to make soup so that his acolytes could revitalize—hellish training was often followed by heavenly rest, not to mention that everyone’s ability had reached a bottleneck period after so many years of training. Apart from the genius that was Lisa, everyone else had stagnated between Golden-pinnacle and Supreme.

If they wanted to improve, they would need a few pointers from their mentor.

***

Meanwhile, on the other side of the dimensions, Joshua had placed a thread of himself into the Spirit Terminal. He liked every posted status of his students over the last few days and left a comment on each, until his eyes eventually landed on the latest status—the photo Amelia took when she completed the diplomatic mission on Huard—and shook his head.

Naturally, it was not because Amelia did not finish her quest perfectly. On the contrary, she had excelled, since the Offering ritual unique to the Huard civilization could directly claim the living essence of creatures and enhance the fundamental attributes of the tribune.

It was actually different combat aura, since Aura at once improved one’s attributes along with the user’s ability to turn objects, which in other words held the general definition of ‘destructive capacity’. The Huards’ Offering had not changed the species, but wildly accumulated life essence to ensure that their fundamentals were incomparably sturdy, even transforming a base structure into new heights, obtaining lifeforce equal or superior to Void Behemoths in their path to Legendary-tier.

The Mycroft combat aura was meanwhile not a way to strengthen the living essence, but a battle tool focused on destruction. If a comparison were to be made, one cultivated and nurtured the body, while the other turned the body into steel armor and a blade to destroy and kill—the latter was certainly effective and produced instant effect of sheer destructive force, but having the former’s powerful essences could assure that Aura cultivation progressed exponentially.

There had not been any Aura training that improved life essences more simply or more effectively than Offering. It was a technique worth learning, and thus, after the Legendary champions had made a display of power, Joshua sent his own acolyte for the exchange while promoting the Redemption System and the Restoration Beam.

The Huards had therefore obtained a skill that tapped into their life essence to unleash greater destruction, while Mycroft had gained a short cut without drawbacks so ordinary combat aura trainees could rapidly step through the early phase of Silver to reach high-phase. Through a solid foundation built by Offering, they could safely awaken combat aura by a hundred percent regardless of their previous frail form, alongside greatly increase the progress of cultivating combat aura afterwards.

It was a delightful win-win situation with both sides having exchanged knowledge they wanted—Joshua, however, shook his head because of what was shown in the image Amelia had posted. In a dark hall where purple flames were ablaze, weird bipedal mountain goats with black horns and red eyes made a circle around the Restoration Beam and prayed at it, as ominous runic bolts sparked within the obscure smoke. It resembled a cultist ritual, no matter how one looked at it. Moreover, whether it had been done deliberately or accidentally, the image that Amelia took of the sunny, healthy, and guileless Offering ritual at once appeared sinister and evil!

“Well, whatever. Mission accomplished.”

Joshua did not consider aesthetic values to be one of his teaching subjects. It was therefore not his business that Amelia enjoyed that sort of tone, not to mention that eccentricities was common amongst champions, since she was one of the future champions, being Joshua’s student.

***

Meanwhile, inside J World, nine continents floated around the silver sun, with the Heroic Spirits of the former civilization diligently farming over it while being summoned for otherworldly tasks from time to time. They had used the points they gained from completed quest in exchange for ‘land expansion’ or ‘land alteration’ services, cultivating it to be more fitting for their own species’ survival.

Until the future when Joshua’s determined standard could be reached, the warrior would grant them rebirth or allow them to create their own species, and the seeds of a civilization reborn would hence dwell on the land they cultivated themselves. Indeed, every Heroic Spirit did all they could to create the perfect living space, since it mattered to their civilization’s revival and development in days to come. It had also been the reason their foundation was so well-established whether they would stay in Joshua’s world or request for independence to live in another world.

Revival notwithstanding, Joshua’s human clone was at present restraining a Psybug with gravity inside the world of his true form, carefully observing and thinking. The Psybugs were bizarre little creatures that resembled cockroaches but were without legs, completely reliant on Psi to float around or latch on to certain objects, spreading to every world by following moving Void vessels. However, they were rare, with not more than a dozen of them even on huge warships. Yet, when that number was multiplied on the scale of the Multiverse, it meant that their population was infinite—although it was unwise and frivolous to count them, just like thinking about their history.

As he held the little insect that was continuously attempting to escape from his hand with its psionic premonition, Joshua’s brow wrinkled. He was very sure that there were no such lifeforms across the Lost Galaxy before they made contact with the Multiverse, but now, they were present in the world of Mycroft as well after just over a year from the Stargate connection. It was beyond a doubt that the journey of the Mycroft Void ships had spread the Psybugs over the entire galaxy.

And then came the question—how did they cross over?

Joshua was very sure that no one had seen those creatures passing through the Stargate. The Psybugs and their distinct Psi presence notwithstanding, the Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds would never have allowed any bacterium or virus past the Stargate. Along with Zero One and the Commanding Will, they acted as the sentries of Mycroft, a threefold perimeter with no existence capable of fooling their guard. “And yet, you are an exception,” Joshua muttered quietly at the Psybug, the aforementioned exception.

There was no sign of their stowaway, until they flourished in the Lost Galaxy to the point that their luminous presence could be found in most Void installations. It was unreasonable. Though it was not unusual that Mycroft’s sentries could be wrong, Joshua had unreserved faith in Zero One and the Commanding Will of the Multiverse Sacrificial Grounds—if they had assured him that there had been none, it meant that there were absolutely none. In other words, the Psybugs were not passing through the Stargate with any known physical or energy form.

Due to their harmless nature and elongated presence, there had been nothing researched about the Psybugs. All civilizations of the Multiverse had gotten used to their presence and viewed them as a natural pattern and phenomenon, and hence did not find their bizarre presence questionable. It was perhaps only Joshua and a select few who questioned everything that had been puzzled by that.

“Then there is only one possibility.”

One of the ways to uncover facts was to eliminate the impossible and whatever remained, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. And there had been one such possibility that Joshua dwelled upon for the longest time—that the Psybugs were not creatures, but entities that existed in the shape of insects and could gather Psi. In other words, the spreading of the Psybugs was not dependent upon genes or the energy source constructs present in energy lifeforms, but a meme similar to information. The Psybugs were an irregular lifeform that flourished with cognition, which was also why most beings could not capture them.

But why?

Joshua was puzzled by that—why did the Psybugs have such unique attributes? If they truly were a creature of information and reproduced through cognition, why were they able to control Psi? Being the most widespread and ancient supernatural force of the Multiverse, the fundamental condition of wielding Psi was to have a soul—was it possible that the Psybugs had it?

No one in the Multiverse were concerned about all that since it was all common knowledge, although it was not as if no one found it peculiar like Joshua. Yet, none could analyze anything, and so they eventually gave up. In truth, Joshua could not either—which was why the warrior spent the last two days observing those normal insects that were composed entirely of psionic energies, repetitively considering any possible answers. He really found the creature unusual, and attempted to solve that question.

Having labored for a long time, Joshua himself was now on leave inside his own world, ensnaring Psybugs with a tight grip as he sought an answer for the life of him.

Meanwhile, the other Legendary champions were not idling.