Soul of Searing Steel
chapter-290

Chapter 290: The Mountain is the Enemy!

In the darkness that engulfed all light, the stone giants, appearing just like the titans from the myths, were moving forward one step after another, leaving heavy footprints behind.

Every single raindrop of the torrential rain contained the power of Chaos. The rain and the mists that were enriched with magic energy was shrouding the bodies of those stone giants, causing those mindless humongous puppets to be able to move much more agilely. Even their strengths are tremendously increased.

The thunders rumbled in the sky, the flashing of lightning occasional revealed the horrific figures of those monsters.

Knowing that they were standing in the face of attacks from such huge monsters, any Elven soldiers would have lost their will to fight no matter how brave they were. It is only natural when one is forced to face something that was so huge. A battle would be pointless and futile with enemies of that size.

The trembling of the earth was getting even more intense. The forests were shaking and the buildings in the city were making rattling sounds. The movements of the giants that were approaching from afar did not slow. They strode across the earth, unwavering. Their eyes were gleaming with the radiance of magic energy. The power that their bodies contained was enough to destroy the entire city. Each of them could crush an army of tens of thousands with simply a swing of their arms.

The stone giant that was leading the others has arrived at the outskirts of the city. Everyone could feel the thunderous trembling caused by the footsteps of the stone giants before seeing them. Even with the thick mists that clouded the visions of everyone, they could still see the terrifyingly huge figure of the monster. The large dark shadow broke through the raindrops as it trampled across the surface of the earth, marching towards the position where the warrior currently was. Its body was originally filled with of irregularly shaped rocks. However, its body currently has edges and corners after it went through some self-adjustments. The raindrops that carried magic energy caused the surface of its body to gradually turn silver, making its body obviously visible to the people from a distant.

Although its body was only formed from a pile of giant rocks, under the influence of the Chaos energy and the magic energy in its surroundings, its body has become much greater and tougher than refined steel. Even when the lightning strikes from the heaven, they did not leave a scratch. Instead, the lightning strikes have surged across the body of the stone giant, making its body looked as if purplish electrical surges were running across its mountainous body.

That was a straight on natural disaster, not a calamity caused by men.

Just like storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis, these unimaginable giant statues were approaching the capital city like natural disasters. They have brought endless destruction to the surroundings just by simply passing through. All of the elves in the mayor’s office have basically given up on hope. Back at the sanctuary, the silence of despair has overwhelmed everyone inside. Some of them were miserably mourning their own fates and some of them have even lost their minds. Everything that was happening inside the sanctuary felt like doomsday.

Enemies like these were beyond their imaginations. Everything was so unreal like nightmares.

However, wishing that it was all a nightmare was only hope and imagination.

The warrior looked hard at those walking calamities, these moving mountains. He did not show the slightest fear, he didn’t even flinch. With a flash of magic energy, he grabbed onto a great sword and a giant axe as he stood between the two draconic horns on top of his mount’s head. He smiled boldly.

That’s right, in this world, no human being could ever destroy a mountain and cut off rivers, nor could he or she stop huge tidal waves and the storms from wrecking havoc upon the people in this world. Hence, there was no shame for the people in this world to feel fear.

However, the warrior was Joshua, a warrior that came from the Mycroft Continent, a champion that possesses extraordinary strength.

And so, such enemies could only inspire his fighting spirit and keep the long-awaited heart of the warrior satisfied.

“Charge, Black!”

He gave the order to his mount and added, “The battle has begun.”

The draconic horse let out a long neigh and did not show even the slightest hesitation. It immediately charged forward as swiftly as the speed of a lightning. The stormy winds and the impacts that were hurled up by Black as it charged forward has left a corridor of vacuum in the heavy rain. It was moving forward at a speed that not even the speed of sound could catch up with.

The giant monster that was leading the rest of the stone giants naturally noticed the draconic horse that was charging at it. For ordinary people, a body of over twenty meters tall was a gigantic beast already. However, for the stone giant, the body of Black was merely a small existence that it could grab with just one arm. Along with the operation of the magic circle in the brain of the giant monster, it reached out its palm without showing any hesitation. Its palm looked as if a mountain was pressing down upon its target. A gigantic shadow descended from the sky as if the entire world was being overshadowed by its shadow all of a sudden.

With a flash of silver light that light broke the darkness that shrouded the entire sky, the stone giant seemed as if it was being hit hard by an invisible force. The impact of the force was so strong that the stone giant could not balance itself as it stumbled a few steps backward before its gigantic body collapsed onto the ground. The impact of the fall caused water to splash up from the muddy ground and the earth to quiver so violent that it felt like the impact formed a shock wave.

It was easy to see that half of its palm was gone. During that instant when the two of them clashed into each other, along with the great sword that was charged with Combat Aura, its body that was supposedly as tough as steel was cut open, crushing part of its palm to the ground, turning the remaining of the broken parts into broken rocks.

As the rumbling went on, the giant monster attempted to stand back up on its feet. However, Joshua did not give the opportunity for the monster to do so. With a swift movement of the draconic horse, the warrior aimed his axe at the head of the monsters and swung it through the air. A bladed arc of Combat Aura swung across the air, cutting straight through the rain, striking deep into the head of the giant statue. The tough body that could not even be penetrated by the lightning was instantly split opened by the Combat Aura strike like it was made of thin paper. A deep cut wound appeared on the head of the monster. And it seemed that the core inside the monster has been destroyed as well. When the giant monster had its head struck by the attack, it stopped dead in its track. Then, it began to shatter and crumble to the ground, scattering into pieces of small rocks.

[5/30]

The first stone giant collapsed onto the ground and turned into a pile of rocks and dust. However, more giant monsters emerged from the hills in the distance one after another. They appeared just like the first one which has been reduced to dust and small rocks. They have gigantic rocky bodies that are tougher than refined steel as well. They have no fear, nor emotion. These Rock Puppets only have one goal.

To destroy Joshua.

The azure orb flashed before his chest, providing the nemesis of the Chaos with an endless momentum of power. It was also shining bright enough to attract the eyes of all the enemies within the vicinity.

The giants were beginning to surround the warrior. In the violent quakes that were about to break the earth into pieces, they reached their arms out, attempting to crush the small existence they resented so much. However, Joshua who was standing on the draconic horse would never stand still for these slow monsters to land a finger on him. The moving speed of Black seems to have reached the speed of the lightning now. It evaded every single attack that the monsters threw at it. The silver light and the black light continuously flashing on. With a swung of the gigantic axe that was charged up with his Combat Aura, the warrior struck one of the gigantic monster’s ankle and knee into pieces.

Upon losing its support and its center of gravity, the gigantic rock statue collapsed onto the ground slowly. However, it was not as lucky as its first comrade that was killed earlier on. There was a huge mound right behind the stone giant that was falling backward. Its back fell right on top of the peak of that mound. Along with a thunderous sound of crashing that shook the heaven, the mound was leveled down to the ground and the giant statue broke into half.

“Destroy it.”

Under the command of Joshua, Black swiftly spat a dragon breath towards the wound at the waist of the stone giant. The golden core began flashing, followed by a blast of white blazing light beam shooting out from it. The high-temperature light beam vaporized all of the water from the rain in its surroundings, causing white mists to form all around the place where the beam passed. Right after the white light beam is shot into the body of the monster, a violent explosion occurred within the body of the monster. Shortly, the giant monster turned into a pile of shattered rocks and dust, just like the first monster.

[6/30]

However, one death was only replaced by many more. Many of those stone giants emerged. The formation of the stone giants is getting more crowded by the seconds. Because of that, Black’s movement had been greatly affected. It has lesser space to evade the attacks of the giant monsters. After all, a giant dragon’s body was huge. Although its size was completely incomparable to the size of one stone giant, it still could not move agilely at its own will, especially under the circumstance where Joshua needed to attack the enemies. It would have to get very near to the enemies in order to allow Joshua to land his attack on the enemies. If they were only encountering one or two of these stone giants, the situation would still be manageable. However, once the number of these enemies increases, the risk in facing them increases by many folds.

“Black, get over to the side and be ready to support me with your dragon’s breath.”

After giving Black clear commands, Joshua immediately rose and flew to the sky. The draconic horse did not show the slightest hesitation at all. It ran towards the distance. The stone giants were stunned by Black’s sudden change of movement. As there were two sources of Order energy within their radar senses, the giant monsters could not pick a target that quickly. They were confused about which target to go after first. Soon afterward, they decisively locked their focus on the small shadow of a man that was levitating in the middle of the sky.

Without Black as his mount, Joshua would have to exhaust his own energy in order to fly and move around in the air. And because of that, he could no longer focus on attacking his enemies. However, at the same time, he has become a much smaller target that could move around even more freely than before. The Rock Puppets attempted to grab the warrior. They even picked up the dirt and rocks from the ground and threw them at the sky. However, all of their attempts were futile. There was no way they could land a hit on the warrior as they were huge and slow. Instead, the movements of the stone giants have become much larger, in which they became more vulnerable than before whenever they did some extreme movements, leaving their bodies more opened for their enemies to attack them. Hence, Joshua seized the right moment and destroyed two more stone giants.

[8/30]

Upon noticing that their attacks were ineffective, the eyes of several stone giants with vague golden complexion on the surface of their bodies, which body sizes were the most massive, began to unleash the blinding light of magic power. A white light followed by a buzzing sound struck towards Joshua like a lightning strike.

However, the warrior has already noticed the strange behaviors of the few stone giants. He has been wary of these giants’ movements and their motives. Now that he saw the stone giants’ eyes were being charged, the warrior instantly stomped his feet in the air as he left ripples of air waves. Afterward, his entire body vanished into thin air. A light beam descended from the sky as it struck into the dark clouds that were shrouding the entire sky. Instantly, lightning began to spread like spider webs, lighting up the entire dark sky.

“Driven to wield the lightning, the strength of the thunder? Are these really titans that are not formed completely?”

Lifting his head and looking up to the sky, Joshua could not help but have such thought flashing across his mind. No one could have blamed the warrior for thinking too much. After all, that gigantic bodies of these stone giants and the way they were summoning the power of thunder did look like ones of the titans from legends and myths. The warrior sighed as he spoke quietly to himself, “The Apocalyptic Circle, the Titan Puppets… So how did the Chaos achieve such powerful technological abilities then?”

This was completely different from the last time when the warrior had an encounter with the Chaos Evil God ‘Famine’. It is true that the abilities of the Aragami were extremely terrifying. One single unit of them is already so much stronger than a golem. Some of the daemons and giant beasts are even as powerful as these stone giants. However, those creatures merely possessed the physiques and magic energy. Meanwhile, the power from the beginning up until this point was all the power of a civilization.

It was truly ridiculous that an Evil God, which purely wanted to destroy worlds, possessed the power of a civilization and used that power to destroy another civilization. There was a great irony in this.

The stone giants seemed to be aware that their attacks futile and that they would be eventually defeated one by one by the warrior if they continued. Hence, these stone giants and the titans that seemed yet to fully take their form pulled back temporarily from their pointless attacks on the warrior. Along with thunderous rumbles, these giant monsters began to gather in one spot as they stuck their bodies against each other. They then remained silent and still without making even the slightest movement. Everything turned quiet as if the battle was over.

However, the warrior was suddenly aware of the change. He had seen it before. The battle was far from over!

The wind of magic energy began to roll over the place.

The power of elements gathered rapidly.

The stone giants were fusing into one, turning themselves into something much bigger than they were before. It looks just as tall as a mountain, gleaming with the complexion of steel. Its appearance was like a giant fortress without even a single cannon muzzle on it, a mountain peak that was capable of moving around on its own.

There were ten light spots that looked just like the multiple eyes of a spider that gave people the creep right on the tip of the moving mountain. It felt bizarre and evil from the looks of it. These light spots were actually the eyes of the previous stone giants, which sparkled with bright lights.

Everything that Joshua saw with his own eyes filled him with dismay. Lightning beams shone from those light spots. Each of the lightning beams varied in length. They aimed at the warrior like a laser. The purely destructive power broke right through the atmosphere and the rain, reducing everything to nothing. The air was instantly filled with plasma surges, locking down the routes that the warrior could use to evade their attacks.

In an instant, the sky became a sea of lightning, sure to reduce everything within the vicinity to nothing.

A red light spot shot across the sky. It aimlessly in the sky while the beams of white blazing electrical surges flashed around, attempting to strike the red light spot down. Despite being slower that Joshua, their accuracy was undoubtedly high as their movements were controlled by the magic circle that was found within their heads. A dozen of stone giants gathered around as they shared the same energy source upon merging together, forming into a Thunderous Mountain, attempting to lock the warrior’s speed down with their oppressive fire power.

One would eventually make mistakes after dodging for a long time. Not to mention that the warrior was much more agile when moving on the ground than moving in the air. A flash of lightning was seen brushing by the arm of the warrior, reducing the armor on his shoulder of his arm into ash and dust. His flesh beneath that layer of armor has also been burnt. The Azurite did not leave the wound of the warrior unattended for more than a split second though. It began spinning at top speed as it began to provide the warrior with the power to heal. Along with the self-regenerative ability of his Gold-tier champion, the warrior managed to swiftly regenerate and the wound on his arm was almost recovered. Even though he was no longer in a serious situation, however, that attack has put a tremendous amount of pressure upon the warrior.

He was completely helpless against such attack. It was impossible for him to defend himself against these enemies. One strike would be enough to send him to the afterlife!

Even though Joshua was extremely powerful, his strength will never be able to match the power of so many stone giants after they have merged themselves into one. Not to mention that these stone giants have merged themselves into a Thunderous Mountain. Even if Joshua could activate his ‘Avatar’ to immunize himself from the strength of the lightning that his enemies possess, he was not confident that he would be able to end the battle within the effective duration of his ‘Avatar’. By then, he would have no choice left but to retreat from the battle without defeating his enemies.

Increasing numbers of stone giants continued to emerge from the edge of the horizon. There were also quite a number of titans that have yet to take their full form among the stone giants that were advancing. All of them were capable of wielding the power of thunder as they begun aiming their thunder strikes at Joshua. Their arrival has pushed Joshua into a perilous situation. Increasing light beam attacks filled the battlefield, causing the warrior to not be able to approach those giant monsters. The battle has come to a deadlock. His stamina was being exhausted, the warrior was being pushed further into the corner. If the situation remains at such pace, the warrior might not even be able to pull himself out of the battle.

Just as the warrior was considering activating his ‘Avatar’ to break through the situation where he was being locked down in a crucial situation, the deadlock of the battle was broken by a beam of holy light.

With a thunderous roar, the blockade that was formed with countless electrical surges was broken and a gap appeared in the middle of the blockade. The warrior noticed that and seized the opportunity without hesitating, getting himself out of the perilous situation. Joshua aimed at a stone giant that was on its own. Then he charged towards that stone giant at lightning speed with his black axe. His axe came into contact with the raindrops and caused sharp noises. In an instant, the warrior chopped off the entire head of the stone giant, decapitated it and caused its gigantic body to crumble to the ground and shatter into a million pieces.

[9/10]

He turned his head towards the direction of the opening on the blockade.

“Joshua, why are you moving so fast every single time?”

From afar, the holy knight held a holy warhammer. Roland stood on top of the wreckage of a stone giant as he laughed out loud, “Are you treating me, your comrade, like as if I am invisible or what?”

At the same time, right by his side, the core in Black’s chest was gleaming brightly as well. It was the both of them joining hands in unleashing a beam of light attack that aided the warrior to break him out of the deadlock he was in.

“Humph.”

One corner of his mouth turned up in a slight grin, then the warrior laughed in a deep voice, “You were too slow, and you blame me for moving too fast?”

—Thank you anyway for the rescue this time around.

Instead of paying attention to the holy knight and the draconic horse that attracted the attention of the stone giants, the warrior turned his head around and looked at the Thunderous Mountain that was adjusting its angle and trying to aim at the warrior again. Joshua’s red eyes swirling with vortexes that looked like blazing flames.

Danger—that was truly intoxicating. The thrill of knowing that one’s life was threatened, the intense emotion of knowing one’s life was on the line between life and death, and the joy to be able to go all the way in a battle; the warrior couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

He looked down and spewed out a white, hot gas. The Azurite right before his chest was spinning swiftly as it beat like a heart. Joshua has placed his great sword and his large axe that were charged with his red Combat Aura before his body in a cross shape like the letter ‘X’. Then the Combat Aura around him began to swirl like a whirlpool all around him. A terrifying power and presence brewed in the atmosphere.

Joshua moved at the very same moment when the Thunderous Mountain was done aiming at him.

A long trench emerged on the surface of the earth where the red light went through right above the surface of the earth, just under the bombardment of light beam attacks at the spot where the warrior was standing just a short moment before. The atmosphere, the dirt, and the rocks were all pushed away to aside by the rapidly moving red light. He is moving in the opposite direction where the thunder strikes were coming from. He charged straight at the peak of the gigantic mountain. The tiny shadow of the man looked like a small particle of dust. However, the momentum at which it was charging at was as terrifying as the momentum of a meteorite that was about to crash onto the earth.

As he made his way towards the Thunderous Mountain while evading all of the attacks that were thrown at him, countless destructive attacks struck next to him, leaving giant pits on the surface of the earth. An attack would be pointless if it could not land on its target. Joshua lifted the great sword in his hand as the red Combat Aura began to charge it, swirling rapidly all around the sword. With a single swing, he cleaved the light beam that was about to land in his face and charged right at the monster. He arrived before the gigantic thing that was hundreds of meters tall.

In that instant, the man and the mountain were significantly different. It was just like comparing a particle of dust to a giant rock. One would not be able to notice the existence of a dust when the attention was focused on the giant rock.

An ordinary man will never be able to destroy a mountain. That was an enemy that carried the destruction level of a natural disaster. It was an existence that one could not simply defeat.

Even Roland and Black who were on the sidelines revealed their worries. They believed that the warrior would not let himself be exposed to danger for no reason. But they did not believe that the warrior being capable of destroying that terrifying enemy right before him. Unlike the giant statues, this Thunderous Mountain was simply too enormous in size. Regardless of how sharp one’s blade turned out to be, one could only deal damage to the surface of the mountain. And that sort of attempt would be futile.

However, along with a loud laughter, a thunderous sound is heard coming from the Thunderous Mountain.

The sound of metal and rocks clashing into each other echoed throughout the entire heaven and earth. The sound has even overshadowed the sound of the thunders. Even the rumbling sounds that sounded like earthquakes were no match for that sound that echoed all over the place. Dust rose to the surface layer of the thunder in the sky—even the rain could not stop the dust from rising into the air. Roland, who witnessed everything, is astounded to the point that his jaw dropped as he continued to stare at the scene unfolding before him.

Joshua–

He broke through the outer shell of the Thunderous Mountain and charged straight into it!