Soul of Searing Steel

"…An attack?"

Josuha's broken consciousness had reassembled because of his desire to battle. But even as he awakened within the icy coldness of the Void, what he saw was merely the surge of the Mana Tide which had begun to return to calmness.

Scattered white radiant specks were strewn across the dark Void and gathered into a gushing flow like stardust. Embedded within the gush, the larger world of Stellaris was a reef—sturdy, stubborn, and seemingly eternal unchanging. With that as the backdrop, the shockwaves from the battle continuously extended into the distance like a silver luminous circle.

"…nothing…"

The Ultimate Sublimator Collective had been defeated, and Joshua's enemy had ceased to exist.

Upon realizing that, Joshua consciousness, which had almost slumbered just before, began to slacken once again.

Soon, however, he noticed a luminous silhouette in a corner of the surge, boasting a powerful presence that simply could not be ignored.

It was a humanoid, which was ablaze with psionic energy and divine power far hotter than a supernova. Twelvefold bounded fields were crossing and spiraling from it as twelve dominated spaces, chewing down on everything like fangs. Moreover, there was no personal label upon that humanoid form at all, with only a single eye faintly discernible from its head, allowing it to be identified.

It was a Takurian.

In fact, it was the Grand Patriarch of the Takur Ruin Cult, Galgur Takur.

"…danger!"

The other's power was of such intensity that it was capable of wiping away his mind now, in his moment of vulnerability. Upon sensing that potential threat, Joshua finally reassembled his consciousness in full based on his basic instinct of hostility.

Like a star assuming form after being accelerated countless times around a core—or the lack of it—one way or another, in a certain spot in the Void, a power began to surge, with more and more Steel Strength thus manifesting and converging before spreading.

However, Galgur did nothing even as he reassembled his consciousness. The being that was once considered an enemy had actually conveyed no hint of hostility from the very start, and simply used its single radiant eye, which could now longer close itself, to stare at the cluster: a nebula giant which was now continuously manifesting and putting its broken limbs to their original positions.

Otherwise, with that malice alone, Joshua could not have reawakened.

Still.

"…it's not looking good, Patriarch of the Takurians."

In the very moment that Joshua's mind had been restored, his first words was a ruthless statement of reality. "You're disintegrating."

"It's really annoying to hear that from a fellow such as you, who had almost dissipated entirely just a moment ago."

The humanoid formed of divine energy opened his mouth as if saying something, but his words were immeasurably distorted as if a million voices were speaking at the same time, the voices utterly overlapping. Pausing blankly for a moment, the Grand Patriarch then shook his head and laughed bitterly.

"…So, I can't even talk? This sort of ending is just a little too lonely."

"It's not as bad as you would think," Joshua replied to this, sighing flatly.

Meanwhile, the giant that resembled a nebula was compressing himself once again, withdrawing the broken pieces of his body, which had almost spread throughout half of Stellaris itself, and rebuilding his form. Soon, in a brief dozen seconds and as inexhaustive Steel Strength had once again been compressed into a crystallization, it unfurled amidst a single rumble, becoming a brand-new world—the warrior has rebuilt a world, an embodiment of his personal consciousness.

"Is it that shocking?"

Now, having recovered his body to the size a star, the four-armed world giant turned his eyes to the Grand Patriarch, whose single eye was widened. "I could understand even the voices of worlds and Evil Gods. What is your voice in comparison? Anyway, thanks for your help before."

"…"

The Grand Patriarch kept silent and did not respond, but Joshua had never been one to concern himself over such things. The power of the Takurian Grand Patriarch had been one of the most important elements in defeating the Ultimate Sublimator Collective.

Before this, Joshua's clone which had escaped the pursuit of the Ultimate Sublimator Collective had been accumulating power by the downstream of the Great Mana Tide. He had split away millions of Restoration Beams that flowed along the Mana Tide to reach different corners of the Multiverse, drawing energy and waiting for an opportunity when his main combat form and the Ultimate Sublimator Collective fought to a stalemate, and then blindsided the enemy from behind.

Halfway through it, however, he picked up on the psionic presence that could only belong to Takurians. It was when the most powerful presence arrived that Joshua saw the Grand Patriarch, leading an entire legion of souls and brimming with almost profoundly limitless divine energy as they made a beeline for the Ultimate Sublimator Collective.

When he saw that, Joshua's clone could still mostly deduce the reason behind it even if he did not know what it was all about. Therefore, compressing all the power he could collect from the Great Mana Tide, he darted forward along with the Grand Patriarch.

Incidentally, when they rushed to the scene of the battle, the Ultimate Sublimator Collective had been maimed and prepared to flee Stellaris. Hence, both the Grand Patriarch and Joshua raised their powers to the very limit and beat it back into it.

That single strike had been the power that Joshua had gathered from all his own clones spread throughout the cosmos, the energy gathered from consuming a few worlds, along with the Steel Python Star's power as the Soul Cycle, the Triple Curtain's power, the Takurians' power, as well as Joshua's clone after it had intercepted the surge of the Great Mana Tide.

Moreover, the warrior had also stuffed the black hole bomb containing the mass of six billion stars inside the body of the Ultimate Sublimator Collective—even if it would not have been lethal in its peak form and very much manageable, its body was completely harmed inside out, and so with the pincer attack from atop and beneath, as well as the combined might of near endless ranks of civilizations' champions, it was struck down by their combined might and perished utterly. 

"…actually, we were almost unable to kill it."

Absorbing the information which he had exchanged with the Ultimate Sublimator Collective in the fields of dimensional fragments, Joshua could not help but sigh. "We are all beings who fight against the darkness in the first place. Why could it not just understand cooperation and communication?"

Be that as it may, if the Ultimate Sublimator Collective actually had the capacity to work together and interact with others, it would not have been the Egoistic Beast, and certainly not so powerful to reach the threshold of Demi Saint.

When Joshua had finally mostly restored his body and roughly 80% of his combat prowess, the Grand Patriarch finally spoke.

"I'm dying," he said softly.

"I know," Joshua nodded and replied calmly. "And I can assure you that as long as the Takurians no longer treat us with hostility, the people of Mycroft will not treat the Takurians as an enemy."

"Good…"

With that powerful assurance and after having personally witnessed the otherworld champion from the Lost Galaxy displaying power far beyond that when they fought years ago, the worried Grand Patriarch could not help but heave a sigh in relief, his tightened nerves relaxing at once. All at once, divine presence began to set ablaze upon his body as strong luminous flames, as if to devour Galgur.

From a certain perspective, it was a divine advent.

It was then on that Joshua finally saw the state that the Grand Patriarch was in.

***

With their 'thoughts' alone, which in other words was the resemblance and common understanding towards 'doctrine' and the 'mindset of the divine', devout followers of a faith could invoke the power of gods upon their own bodies to unleash power far beyond their own abilities.

Naturally, zealotry did not denote resemblance, but was instead very far away from it, since it was blind worship and not true belief. Generally speaking, clergies who could cast divine invocation were mostly considered apostles, as their words and behaviors were mostly identical to gods' and very much a backup form of the gods. If a god should fall, those apostles could directly obtain their legacies from Divine Dungeon Shrouds and in turn become a new god.

On the other hand, the Takurian Grand Patriarch had now essentially invoked over millions of deities!

Although the power of the invoked gods was actually weak and insignificant and it was unimaginable at all why such weak deities existed, what manifested within a short time with the multiplication from their terrific fundamental numbers was a power that could almost match the Demi Saint itself. Joshua could not at once tell what the 'common understanding' was in which the Takurian Grand Patriarch had invoked so many deities at once, but being the Creator of the Four Divine Rings of Emotion, he could faintly sense that it was a remarkably strong bond of emotion that linked the Grand Patriarch to that power.

"…it is love."

Finally, Joshua managed to see through the essence of that emotion. He then hesitated before stopping himself for a moment, leveling his own gaze at Galgur's.

"From a certain point of will, you were embodying the divine power of billions with your individual form. Even if your soul and will and that divine power have a remarkable infinity, you would quickly be devoured by the excessive power of the Root, therefore progressing towards Divine Death. That is the reason you are disintegrating."

The warrior calmly described his understanding about the Takurian Grand Patriarch's present state. "Even if you dispel your divine invocation form, your body and mind would be overburdened by the absence of divine power, dying as your body is utterly incinerated."

"Divine death is assured if you don't give up."

"It's like almost dying."

That Takurian divine invocation had granted the Takurian Grand Patriarch the ability to fight the Demi Saint, even if his present power was far from reaching that level… perhaps, it was the presence of such a trump card that kept the Takurians and the Court of Imperator Amos in a standoff for so many years.

If the purpose of Amos civilization had been for the amusement of a single individual, the Takurian civilization was a true collective.

If the former's motivation to fight was the hate towards alien races, the motivation to fight for the latter would be their love for their own brethren.

"Whatever the case may be, this battle is over."

Joshua turned towards Stellaris with a thin gaze. "The very origins of the Evil Gods in Stellaris has been wiped out, and the source of the Ultimate Plague having been stricken down by us just now. Even if the plague itself is still at large, it would not be in waves after waves and spreading without an end—the Multiverse is now much safer because we had fought."

"Although I'm unsure if it's possible, Galgur, I have a divine position ready just for you on my end which could stop your divine invocation, and sustain you with new divine powers."

After Joshua had agreed to the ceasefire between Mycroft and Takur, Galgur, who had been staying motionless where he had been, allowing radiant divine flames to burn his body as they would while pondering about something, finally looked up, his single eye staring tightly at the silhouette of the God of Steel.

He was being serious.

And for some reason, the same idea occurred to the Grand Patriarch.

"…why don't we put it to the test?"

***

It was a pyrrhic victory.

The galaxy had been shattered. With the clash between multiple champions, the energy and gravitational tide that had been present and expanding for billions of years in the galaxy had been reduced to broken bundles of light. Countless stars were drained of any energy and crushed into fine dust, just as an untold number of living things were massacred—but like fire amongst bushes, the Evil Gods and their spawns were burnt into cinders that wafted away.

And more than that, as the calls of the Demi Saint had thundered the universe, countless guardians advanced one after another towards it, driven by their own motivations to destroy that greatest of foes.

Even so, it had been a profound sacrifice.

The ancient Life Preservation Sequence reached the end of its life in the battle, with half of the Triple Curtain destroyed. In the most violent of resistance against the enemy, the Observer Hall had perished, while the Beacon of Perpetuity itself developed severe programming errors—needing not only time but also a long accumulation of strength in order to recover to its original state. More than well, the consciousness of the Steel Python was left broken, which would take a period counted in units of hundreds of thousands of years, and could essentially be pronounced 'dead'…

But it was because they had done their best and thrown themselves into the flame that final victory was earned in that battle.

The otherworld champion—the Takurian Grand Patriarch—was himself on the verge on death.

Meanwhile, the civilizations, who realized in shock that the radiance of the Great Mana Tide was even more blinding than before… would never realize that energy, which was even thicker than before, had originated from a beast that was almost a Wise One.

The Ultimate Crisis itself had also caused the death of endless lives in the Multiverse and created uncountable horrific Ultimate Entities—lifeforms freed from their original species, but never identifying as one of them. The sheer damage they caused was even more terrible than the virus itself.

Untold ranks of civilizations and rules were decimated because of that.

But, at the very least, the curtains had fallen upon the age of torment and despair for Stellaris.

***

[Summary: At least we have uprooted all the poison in our world.]

Stellaris, the World Inner. Residence of the Steel Python.

The First Curtain—the Probability Engine, one of the survivors amongst the Triple Curtain, the only one with its reasoning left, was also the most optimistic out of the three. After processing all possibilities, it was aware that misery or sadness changed nothing, and an optimistic perspective would instead change itself and the world. 

[Statement: The Multiverse holds infinite possibilities. Perhaps there would have been a way where less lives had to be sacrificed, but now, at least, we have done all that we could.]

[Report: 47.831 years is required for the Third Curtain to repair its logic sequences. It is not too long. On the other hand, the actual time to rebuild the Second Curtain is indefinite, but general estimates place it at 300 years, while the main process that would allow it time to be restored as a psionic collective would take around dozens of thousands of years… still, at least there would not be hostiles from the Void that rampantly invade and violate the right of all life to live.] 

"Right."

Having returned inside Stellaris, Joshua had sent the Grand Patriarch to the psionic realm where the Four Divine Rings were so that the master of psionic energy and divine power could figure out what to do himself. Having done all that he could, the warrior quietly said, "There's no telling what has happened back home… but it shouldn't be a problem."

After all, not only had they not requested for aid, but they instead provided him great assistance. It was clearly evident that things were under control, with nothing unexpected happening.

With that thought, Joshua slowly closed his eyes in the World Inner.

He began to restoring himself, healing the wounds from the previous battle and the damage to his clone due to excessive energy snatching from his clone.

***

Every Restoration Beam in the Multiverse shone in silver radiance once again.

But this time, it was not to take, but to return.

[The Life Preservation Sequence, Leader of Stellaris, and the Stellar Guard Alliance had been severely injured. Though most of the main fleet had evacuated safely, the shattering of the Dark Galaxy had caused dimensional tremors that left most of the fleet warping to wrong places due to the distortion. Furthermore, the destruction of the chain of command delayed distribution of orders, with many troops unable to return home for a long time, stranded in unfamiliar planets where they established bases and awaited rescue.

Amongst the Emotion Fleet, the Tanyan commander Kedar, leader of the Gallantry, had died valiantly in battle in the fight against the Evil God (information regarding the Ultimate Sublimator Collective was left unrevealed). His name was marked into the Plague of Honor along the many heroes of the war in the capital planet of the Federation.

According to estimates from academics, the majority of gravitational waves and energy shockwaves ensuing from the collapse of the Dark Galaxy would be directed to the Void beyond the world, but even the fraction of forces remaining would spread over a million light years and engulf over dozens of galaxies. However, that was a matter for a million years later, as the residual energy would be unable to cause significant damage by then.

Apart from the initial stages where the sudden appearance of an Ultimate Entity caused havoc on the Zeta Ram Void installation, the realm of Mycroft had not suffered excessive losses. Appropriate emergency countermeasures and complete shelter guidance kept carnage at a minimum, with most Ultimate Entities captured by the point-by-point net that the Legends and True Gods had spread, later imprisoned in the world where the main body of the Black Fog had also been kept. From then onwards, Mycroftians would keep all Void creatures deemed a threat in that prison world, preserved as samples.

After recovering news from a person involved that the source of the epidemic had been vanquished, most Mycroft citizens were allowed to leave the Shelters and to return to their homeland. Some, however, played the role of trial subjects who were permitted to remain in the Shelter.

The destruction caused by the battles against Ultimate Entities left major cities in ruins, but using that as a springboard, the united governments of Mycroft commenced a major construction of modern cityscapes. Using the moving fortresses of Karlis as a model, Mycroft would build mobile cities that could move in space, similar to the residences that the Starherders built over the backs of Void Behemoths.

However, unlike the Lost Galaxy that was stable, most civilizations in different galaxies across the cosmos were left in carnage. The wide-reaching supernatural epidemic was capable of killing trillions, with a cosmic amount of body count across the galaxies and civilizations.

Within the shortest of period, the cosmos saw the accumulation of endless hate and vengeance, with a fair number of Evil God embryos actually manifesting. Not only did the champions therefore have to fight the Ultimate Entities born in their own civilization, they also had to be cautious against remains of the Evil Gods born from the remains of other civilizations.

It was a terrible situation in which optimism was not impossible.

Aside from that information, there was also puzzling news: the Psybugs were suddenly reproducing exponentially—eyewitnesses claimed that the already-common lifeform was now ever present, that if it had to be put into words, it was like having the occasional butterfly seen in winter becoming a cloud of insects often found near lakes! There were even space merchants who had found nebula clusters of Psybugs warping away by the trillions, a wonder that would not be otherwise seen even over millennia.

On another note, from a certain point of view, the origin point from which the cosmic epidemic had spread was the Galaxy of Bloodbath.

The Takur Ruin Cult appeared to have vanished in the briefest of time, with the warriors of the Amos Court carefully probing their borders. They discovered in shock that only automated defenses remained in most of the fiercely guarded fortress realms, and after an elite outfit had infiltrated their neighbors, the Court had to admit that, during a moment when they were unaware, all Takurians including their marvelous Sanctuary planetary system had disappeared without a trace.

Even so, the Amos had suffered significant casualties, which stopped them from expanding their power. If not for an individual named Elma who used her own body to cultivate a resistant vaccine so that most Amos could delay the Ultimate Plague, the Amos Court would have been the first Apocalyptic civilization to be destroyed by it in the absence of countermeasures. Even so, Elma, who was now worshipped by the Amoses in gratitude, had been infected by the excessive research, and hence induced to a frozen hibernation state.

The Imperator watched it all in silence, neither helping nor stopping the plague.

The cosmos of which the Lost Galaxy was positioned had been one with better fate: the epidemic was not too critical and the quarantining vaccine had been publicized. Furthermore, with the source being culled so swiftly, the majority of populations survived despite the death toll. The civilizations were hurt, but their frame was mostly retained.

Meanwhile, there were other cosmoses that had fallen utterly, leaving ruins where Ultimate Entities slaughtered each other. Those were the domain where the Ultimate Sublimator itself had passed, with major infectants yet to diminish, corrupting all life nearby as spawns of its own.

The beasts' shrieks continued.

There would be no lack of entity embodying absolute selfishness until the very last moment of eternity.

Darkness would disperse for one moment, but faraway on the other side, a thick shroud still swirled.]

***

A long time later, in the World Inner of Stellaris.

Joshua, who was still recuperating, abruptly opened his eyes.

He looked up towards the Void, his gaze filled with astonishment: a massive, indescribable and unimaginable profound presence was moving up from the downstream of the Mana Tide, making a beeline straight towards Stellaris!

Thud—Thud—Thud—

Those were footsteps that quaked the Multiverse itself, approaching from afar.

In one split second, the warrior had left the World Inner and entered the Void. The God of Steel casted Steel Vision with full power to look out towards the endless distance.

Still, in reality, he had not actually needed to look afar.

For in the downstream of the Mana Tide and the worlds which the Initial Flame had abandoned, something 'infinite' was moving. It was moving against the flow, and even those who were blind, deaf, or unable to percept things around them would have been able to see, hear, and feel its presence.

But every living creature that had vigor would have been aware of what was about to come.

The Shadow was spreading.