Soul of Searing Steel

But when Joshua was about to really touch the twisted halo, a massive volume of information surged toward him as usual, with a momentum as if to drown him.

Like how the warrior had received memories of the Evil Gods of Famine, Calamity, Ai,r and Pestilence before, the torrential information flow that belonged to the Evil God of Fertility charged rapidly through the 'contact point' between the two.

Those were memories of an ancient will which had lived through billions of years. Even typical Legendary champions—such as Joshua as he had been a year ago—would have been consumed by those partial memories, unwittingly falling into an Evil God's dreamworld.

However, the Joshua of the present was as helpless as he was before.

The manifested information turned into veins of surging dark shroud, churning like a tide towards the warrior. Vahina and the others, looking from a distance were promptly shocked. They were long aware that the remains of the Evil God of Fertility lay beneath the Spring of Chaos, but they were reluctant to act against that source of Chaos because of that unusual phenomenon of information tethering.

Even now, the Mycroft civilization never made head or tails of the essence of Evil Gods, although most researchers had learned that whenever Extraordinary individuals came in contact with the residual power of the Evil God, their soul and will would be brushed by the voluminous information within. If they were not firm enough, they could end up being brushed into a white paper, although even that was considered good fortune—otherwise, the subject would be brainwashed into an Evil God minion. Mortals would be even worse off: their very minds would be left in a mess with a single glimpse of the true face of Evil Gods or even their minions, due to the sheer volume of information.

Before, Joshua would have no way of evading, but now, having a brand-new mental system and the Light of Order as his head, not only would the warrior not be drawn into a mirage, he would turn the tables and comprehensively receive every piece of information.

Beside him, endless specks akin to stardust shone. Those were minuscule Steel clusters that unfurled rapidly until they assumed a semi-circular formation with three hundred-meter radius, with a few millimeters separating each Steel cluster. They were linked with dazzling light, shaping into servers that stored and control while flickering without stopping, consuming the terrible information flow and faintly showing the shade of a nervous system.

However, that system was simply too massive and rapid that the information network transmitted by lightspeed was moving with unthinkable efficiency.

The torrential Evil God memories crashed forward with the might of a tidal wave, and the black shroud rushed into Joshua's Steel cluster network. It had intended to invade the warrior's mind, only to be subjugated in return by the cluster network, despite the fact that the Chaos information could have dominated the will of typical Legendary champions and beasts. Now, Joshua composedly compiled, edited, and deleted useless information from the billion-year long memories of the Evil God of Famine, translating the meaning within while having the excess strength to extract important portions of those memories, replicating and storing it.

Between breaths, just as the Nature's Magister and the others finally dashed into the bottom of the Fountain of Chaos and prepared to help Joshua counter the crash of Evil God information, Joshua had completely devoured all those memories.

***

Galanoud could not help feeling that she was too late when she saw that the black fog had dissipated, while the huge semi-circular mental network had also been withdrawn into the warrior's body. She stepped forward, asking after the warrior. 

"…Joshua, are you alright?"

"Just feeling a little faint… The Evil God's memories are too erratic—I've overestimated my ability to translate information."

Joshua did not turn as he responded to the Nature's Magister question. He lifted a hand to wipe away the liquid nitrogen that kept flowing out of his forehead, while extreme head seeped out of the top of his head. Air itself was showing signs of ionization, with streaks of wind elements forming small flickering bolts.

Right now, memories related to the Evil God of Fertility rapidly flickered inside Joshua's spirt. But unlike those sporadic recollections that he passively accepted before, Joshua held the initiative this time.

Memories reversed, and Joshua gazed upon the Evil God's past.

It was the final remains left by an ancient being that had risen above many worlds.

Infinite stars moved and flickered rapidly, forming orbits that appeared to be lines which flowed in dark nothingness. Time flowed by the ten thousand, and amidst the vast Void, a nebula that was had been distinctly spreading without end began to close itself, reverting to a star that was nearing its destruction. A stable giant cluster of light hence began to shook at the center of a boundless world cluster, finally splitting into dozens of smaller worlds, and the stream of time churned, darting towards the past.

Grasping the rudder, Joshua ignored the meaningless memories, controlling the direction river of time as he rewound the past, reversing millions or perhaps billions of years. He coldly ignored those devastations of innumerable worlds, as well as the instant where other Evil Gods were born and destroyed by Fertility, because he did not need to know about that.

What he needed was the cause that birthed the most ancient Evil God known so far to the Mycroft civilization and their observable range of the Multiverse.

Thus, after the long rewinding, Joshua's memory finally reached the earliest point in the Evil God's memories: a hundred and sixty million years in the past, a pastoral age for the Multiverse.

The plant space station that stood amidst spatial turbulence spun joyously, stretching its twenty-seven broad energy absorbing leaves and drawing the radioactive energies emanating in the Void. Apart from the plant space station which body carried a small plane, there were many other species of space stations: some were forged from steel, others out of corpses while there were some that resembled living creatures. The most wondrous of them is a cluster of distorted energy flow that kept shifting without stopping while endless runes flashed outside it, even as the core preserved a safe and stable space inside.

Many different beings lived in those numerable space stations. Some of them had multiple tentacles like squid and used psionic energies to levitate in the air, just as there were humanoids that possessed a single mental hub, a single vertebra nervous system, a pair of forelimbs and a pair of forelimbs. There were even those without form and could transform as they wished, metallic particle species interacting with magnetism, along with pure elementals of concentrated energies.

Those diverse species lived the space stations that were not too distant from each other, living in buildings of all manner. They had no conflict and lived in harmony, occasionally spending vessels to exchange resources like a great collective. Indeed, they lived in peace and bliss, having near inexhaustible resources, just like the perfect ending of some legendary tale.

Vision broadened, and one could see the that those space stations renovated out of countless medium or small size planes had actually assumed the formation of a single long row, constructing a massive, almost 'straight line'. But behind that straight line were millions, or billions of luminous bodies, appearing to reflect the brilliance of something and was so bright that even a Legendary champion subconsciously narrowed his eyes.

But when Joshua reacted, he gasped in awe.

For those worlds millions of worlds floating within the Void.

Behind the straight row of plains built from billions of plains was an even more majestic and massive galaxy. Uncountable worlds appeared to have been arranged tidily by artificial means, shaping into a straight line: they were the main body of the endless space stations, and there were small recently planes slowly being moved to the outer walls before the world, before being altered by man champions in the Void and turned into a part of that space station river…

No.

Joshua, who had been studying the Evil God's memory with certain interest, suddenly paused and looked up towards the further Void.

Because the warrior had realized that the river of space stations and the galaxy were not straight.

They were part of a larger annulus, but because the things that the annulus encircled was simple too profound that even the celestial constructs that surpassed all commonly acknowledged upper limit were not enough to manifest its observable arc.

Controlling his vision and pulling back incessantly and wildly, Joshua adjusted his vision even as he felt the sensation of 'inconceivable' rising in his heart. It was a long time later when he could finally see what the colossal annulus was encircled.

Thus, his body shuddered.

It was a cluster of 'light' that did not contain excess information but was beyond description, having neither color nor brightness. Shallow electromagnetism sensory organs such as the human eye could not see it at all, while even Steel Strength vision could only describe it as 'existing'.

Or perhaps, 'Flame'.

The space station river and the galaxy swirled at its outer orbit, upon its 'arc' that was not one even when cumulative units of millions were accounted for. The dazzling radiance at the outer layer of those worlds were deteriorating layers of fiery light, becoming observable energies as they withered—but even as the fiery light were hence blocked by the circle of worlds, they remained a speck that was not worth mentioning amongst all light, while most of it dispersed into the Void, shaping into a torrent of energies that spread across the Multiverse.

The tumultuous power of existence brushed the air, overturned and repetitive, before finally condensing into physical, primitive substances after an unknown and indescribable process—in other words, Steel Particles. Endless, those molecules would gather due to gravity, forming billions of world frames, even as they were being pushed by the fiery light to the outer Void. Only the Steel Particles which corresponding mass was largest and have the highest concentration of Steel Strength could linger around that cluster of 'Flame' and enjoy its illumination.

It was the Initial Flame.

In that instant, Joshua understood what he was actually seeing. It was precisely the central reaches of the Initial Flame and the Multiverse, the surging light of existence creating innumerable observable worlds by the billions. Worlds of smaller mass and lesser energy creation were moved to the edge of the Multiverse, while larger worlds with higher energy concentration were kept at the core region.

And that galaxy, along with that river of countless space stations, were jointly constructed by artificial means by the limitless empowered worlds and their civilization!

Though, according to Joshua's vision, the civilizations in those worlds were not very modern, with some of them still maintaining feudal-era kingdoms and primitive slavery policies, every world had at least one profound being who could enter the Void and travel through the Multiverse. And it was millions of those beings who worked together that such astonishing wonder was built.

In that instant, Joshua remembered a concept maintained on Earth, back in his preexistence—the 'Dyson Ring', or more commonly, the 'Dyson Sphere'.

***

The Dyson Sphere was a theory raised by the physicist Freeman Dyson. It was an artificial celestial body which collective construct could surpass planets, used for encircling planets and extracting the energies within, a natural nuclear reactor pile that used planets as energy source.

That massive artificial planetary body would take the form of a hybrid circles or an entire sphere, encircling stars and drawing most of the energies within. According to his projection, it was a measure to attain more energy after civilization had progressed.

Although the concept of Dyson Sphere would be made severely difficult and nigh impossible due to various issues of material study, astronomy and engineering, it would not be unmanageable in the Multiverse which contained Extraordinary powers where Joshua was. Like the Void Behemoths that wandered the Void, they would grow to a certain threshold before a star automatically gestates within their body, forming a natural living Dyson Sphere.

But that was from the perspective of stars. They were definitely massive, possessing mass and energy that life dwelling on planets or worlds with singular continents could hardly strive for. However, to many Extraordinary civilizations, they were merely a target that can be surpassed—Joshua notwithstanding, even Pope Igor of the Seven Gods Church could. All the pontiff would have to do was dive into the inside of a star, and adjust the speed of light for certain regions… or he could just disturb the constitution of the star to avoid that hassle. Either way, he would very likely destroy a massive star in its entirety.

Meanwhile, for certain superior beings such as the Evil God of Fertility, they could simply pass by or just breathe, and the star would wither and dry.

Joshua amidst the information flow of Fertility's memories. It was not a one-dimensional recollection, but a simulation and relive of Fertility's power using information of the past. The warrior stared from afar at the galaxy where 'Initial Flame' spun, and noted that they were still quite far from becoming the complete construct of a Dyson Sphere. If calculated by a hundred-percent progress, they were only complete by one over a quadrillion—even so, it was a sensational artificial Multiverse celestial construction that was glorious to the utmost!

They deliberately collected existent energies from the central axis of the Multiverse, and with those as fuel, created the many planes and space stations without end as the colony of their own race and civilization!

Insignificant.

Too insignificant.

Joshua gazed upon the 'possible' center of the Multiverse and Initial Flame, and his heart unwittingly developed a sense of wonder—while the celestial construction that the Evil God of Fertility had recreated might not be real, there must be a cause for such illusion. How else would an Evil God of the Chaos be able to imagine such a glorious, Multiverse-class of wonder?

Compared to it, all civilizations and all worlds were so insignificant.

And it was then that some information quietly flowed out from the memories of the Evil God of Fertility.

[Project 'Endless Construct' has failed. Our civilization is ultimately limited, the Boundless Galaxy that surrounds the Origin Point would never be built successfully because the Multiverse and the Initial Flame expands—our construction progress would never exceed the speed of its expansion.]

[The Multiverse is ultimately with limit. We will never reach 'infinite'.]

That information contained endless anguish and sadness, as if a million-year dream was callously pierced and destroyed by ice-cold reality.

There was a limit to the fundamental particles of a singular universe, countable even when divided to the most basic. The fact that it could be counted hence meant that the universe itself was a near-infinity that could be accounted, and regardless if the total of that fundamental unit had a hundred and eighty zeroes or eighteen hundred zeroes behind it, the possibility for those units to be arranged remained limited. Quite simply, the number reached an unimaginably massive threshold that even storage itself needed unthinkably substantial numbering, and it was hence simply known as 'infinite'.

Nevertheless, that form of infinite was fake, just as the Multiverse was a similarly fake infinity. Even if the Initial Flame could instantly create billions of new worlds, at the lowest boundary of time, the sum of existing universes was limited and countable as well. Even if the time taken to count them all could lead to the crumbling or Heat Death of a Universe, even with the cycle of millions of explosions and rebirth were being accounted for, it all remained limited.

[Apart from the Origin Point, there may be no other existence that approaches 'Infinite' in the Multiverse. This path was a mistake.]

The message painfully left its identity and signature upon a document, and slowly vanished, the illusion of the Multiverse with it.

Joshua could vaguely sense that, apart from the galaxy construct which seeks 'infinity', those millions of champions originating from different worlds had numerous similar opinions and plans. The 'Infinite Construct' included, the union of the gargantuan worlds had four masterplans.

Such as 'Eternity', which surpassed all material shifty unto the end.

Such as 'Infinity', which surpassed all limited existences, even imagination.

Such as 'Absolution', which surpassed all concepts of causality, even probability.

Last but not least, indescribable and illogical 'Omnipotence and Omniscience': any thought was mistaken, any retort moot.

Eternity, Infinity, Absolution, Omnipotence and Omniscience. Those were the four 'Ultimates' that countless primitive but high-functioning civilization once sought at the center of the Multiverse.

***

The mirage of the Multiverse completely vanished. All that was left in the memories of Fertility was a dark meaningless light with nothing in it. Standing at the heart of his own spirit, Joshua watched as innumerable black fragments that compounded with weak radiance scrape past him like a flow of consciousness, as if even the Evil God of Fertility itself could not embody the glory and memories of that era.

There was naturally nothing unusual about that. Ultimately, all that was left of the Evil God of Fertility was a mere insignificant fragment—the Sage had pulverized most of its body in the Void, and this was just a shard left of its former glory.

Until the end, until Joshua sensed a soft and slender hand clapping upon his shoulder as if to help him, the warrior finally saw a final, broken illusion of a memory.

It was dark and silent nothingness. Endless stars had shattered into illusory nebulas, slowly wafting away in the Multiverse like corpses of worlds.

The nebulas shone by themselves, but their outer layers would still reflect other excess radiance. That radiance appeared to drive the assembly of nebulas so that they would once again gather into dense clusters of matter through gravity, allowing them to collapse into the shape of worlds in the beginning—but when the world was about to take shape, a power would come out of nowhere to shatter it explosively, reverting into an erratically wafting nebula.

Joshua looked up toward it, and stayed silent for a long time.

He knew that the radiance reflected by the nebula was the light of the initial Flame.

He knew that Evil Gods are born from the destruction of civilization and the world. If so, how was the most powerful Evil God born? He believed the next scene should clear that doubt.

Which was why Joshua looked towards the Initial Flame, towards the 'Boundless Galaxy' construct of what was once galaxies and endless space.

Then, he saw a colossal swirl that was similar to the Void Vortex, and yet was hundreds of times larger than it was. It had been swirling within the Boundless Galaxy, destroying all that existed, with anything larger being utterly crushed by the terrible energies inside the swirl to the most basic of Steel Particles.

And further away from the swirl, at the center of its orbit…

Joshua saw the Initial Flame once again.

It was shrinking.