Soul of Searing Steel
chapter-476

The battle had already begun.

Exhaling once, Joshua lifted his spear with his right hand and leveled it at the enemy before him. His body that had surpassed Supreme and approached Legendary was no longer simple cellular flesh, but microscopic energy construct formed from countless pure lifeforce that was beginning to wildly absorb and convert all the ions adrift around the world. It turned those ions into simple and unsullied explosive impact force and searing energy, ejecting out of the tip of the swordspear.

One, two, four, eight. With a quiver of his right hand, the Dragonslayer Swordspear blurred, and in an instant, thirty-two layers of spiral spear strikes that seemed capable of penetrating everything streaked across the land, creating moats of lava and devouring the silver knight who drove his horse at him.

Fiery heat and impact force were the most primitive of attacks. Joshua had virtually adjusted it to an extreme, with every spiraling spear drive imbued with heats over ten thousand degrees and more than a hundred-ton worth of crushing pressure. It was enough to crumble or melt hills, though its flaw was that it strikes out in a straight line and could easily be evaded by skilled opponents of the same tier, but since Akhar was charging at him in a straight line too he was very much the best of targets.

The spiraling destructive impact struck true on its target, promptly illuminating the barren plain with a powerful light akin to the sun. Incessant sounds explosions echoed amidst the rapidly rising giant sharp pole, but soon a silver-white silhouette broke through it.

A translucent dome with contorted barriers had obstructed all the shockwaves and parted the dust and smoke. Akhar, unscathed, solemnly brandished the orichalcum lance in his hand, causing the very air to tremble. His lance, covered in celestial light, caught every swordspear strike and forcefully broke the remaining spiral drive.

His counterattack followed. Akhar raised his own lance, and without moving, his own spear strike had already darted into the skies and the clouds. Then, as his spear swung down, there appeared to be gleaming starlight as the atmosphere shattered in a thunderous reverberation reminiscent of a volcanic eruption. Air that was brutally tore apart shaped into innumerable surging twisters around Akhar, issuing gulping winds.

It was as if the world has paused in that very instant. An invisible ripple that intends to tear the land into pieces swiftly burst towards the warrior against the lava and gale. Along its way, all the ground and stones were pulverized into the most fundamental of dust atoms that were soon gone with the wind.

However, Joshua was not shaken, nor did he dodge away. He had seen through his foe's attack with one glance—it was a flurry of slight oscillating blows that came at the extraordinary speed of a hundred thousand strikes per second. That was assuredly a power that would turn diamond and steel into ash, something only orichalcum—a divine providence—could withstand.

Even so, blocking the attack did not require much strength. Joshua only had to stop the ground, and with a boom, a mud plate several hundred meters long rose from the ground, becoming an artificial hill that blocked Akhar's attack.

Boom!

With a resounding crash, the hill was drummed into mere particles. Then, a pillar of crimson light blasted out from the cloud of dust, creating a path of vacuum. With the recoil from a stomp, Joshua's body darted like a rocket—complete with a lengthy flame tail—towards Akhar. The earth quaked beneath his feet, and the pair who were trading blows now moved at several times the speed of sound, clashing in no time at all.

In seconds, the battle turned into a melee!

As Joshua flew at an incredible speed, the plain Dragonslayer Swordspear was lowered, carving across the land. Wherever it passed, a huge fissure appeared over rock and dirt, as if the Red Sea parted by Moses. The warrior then raised blade at the tip of the swordspear as if it were a halberd, violently cutting at the knight atop the horse. The strike swung out like lightning, the ferocious white wave of air struck the surrounding earth like a typhoon, drowning everything in one breath.

Still, Akhar was no weakling, and faced his incoming opponent confidently on his horse. With a soft cry and a neigh from his steed, his lance turned into a sword as he directly parried the blade that came from the warrior. With the power of his divine-blooded warhorse and the ability he inherited himself, his lance could have picked up mountains—so what was a single man and a single spear to him?

But something escaped his imagination—Joshua's power surpassed a mountain! The thunderous and violent power was as if a titan giant held a mountain and pounded him with it. Even the knight's steel body that would be unharmed after a direct meteor strike was unable to withstand it.

Akhar's arm thus visibly bent, his bones breaking resoundingly while his orichalcum lance became crooked on the spot. While the warrior's attack was certainly diverted, the knight was sent flying over thousands of meters, crashing into the sand and forming a crater!

"Impressive!"

Within breaths, Akhar's raging bellow rang out from the spot where he fell. Forceful airflow swirled wildly around him as a silhouette rose from the crater. A halo that appeared to be a star orbit flowed around him, and soon, with rubbing sounds of steel, the knight's bent arm returned to its original angle and recovered completely.

The Founder of the Central himself rose into the air as if repelling gravity, overlooking the world with a gaze of fury.

It was the Legacy of the Sixth Celestial Apostle—manipulating gravity as if a possession. All those years before, Akhar had used gravity at several thousand times its normal level and initially felt that his physicality did not lose out to anyone else.

He never thought that he would be dealt such a huge blow by Joshua on this day.

The lance in the knight's hand started to surge with ripples once more—a tremor even stronger than the last. However, although Akhar had wanted to deal a quick retaliation, but was forced to swiftly stop his lance because a scarlet sun was charging towards him!

It was a burning sun of life that turned all things along its way into lava. The sun itself was the man named Joshua at his full-strength, fully unleashing himself and completely freeing himself off all shackles!

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Joshua's body was like light and fire, each step of his on the ground was destructive as if dynamite were detonating beneath it. The brutal impact shook the land wildly, creating radioactive-patterned fissure over the barren plain. Dust storms rose one after the other behind his body, turning into lava rain as they came in contact with the searing emission over the warrior's body.

But before the lava rain touched the ground, Joshua had covered thousands of meters and appeared before Akhar, his body carrying a burnt odor!

Bang! With one heavy step, the warrior brutally brandished the spear in his hand, swiping precisely towards the knight's hip as if it was a bludgeon. The incredible heat caused the black body of the spear to turn blazing white as if it was melting. Though it appeared to carry no hint of technique, it was assuredly an incarnation of the purest of brute strength, forcing the air to surge ferociously with plasma, a physical kinetic power that was unavoidable even for the knight.

Even then, was there a need to evade? 

Completely serious, Akhar's gray pupils glinted in starlight. With a cold grunt, he reached out with his left hand and, with a raised palm, all gravity within hundreds of meters utterly vanished.

The weight beneath his feet emptied at once, Joshua's immeasurably ferocious drive now became vulnerable. His spear attack that engulfed Akhar completely and cut off all routes of escape now had openings that should not be due to the knight's power, and by his own strength, his spear slipped past the knight's head, missing its target.

In the next instant, with a press of Akhar's left hand, a terrifying gravity that was thousands fold more powerful before pressed down on Joshua, holding him tightly where he was!

The thousands fold of gravity was in truth, trivial to Joshua. Even if his body weighed a ton or a thousand times that, it was merely so. With his bare hands, he could carry or send a peak of that weight flying. That being said, Akhar's gravity manipulation was working against the warrior body internally. In that every moment, Joshua could sense that the delicate lifeforce constructs within his body were contorted and shifted under that horrifying gravity, with streaks of that energy circulation stopping at once!

Unable to quickly adapt to the monumental gravity, Joshua lost mobility temporarily. On the other hand, Akhar, too, had no way of retaliating—using the gravity to restrain a being such as the warrior was the same as using an ordinary fishing net to catch a whale that was a dozen meters long. It took all the power the knight had to keep the 'net' from not breaking, so how could he attack?

Soon, however, Akhar was forced to give up the restraint over Joshua. He rose high above, focused, mustered himself, and stabbed out with his lance!

This time, it was not a rapidly vibrating ripple that churns everything into powder. Instead, it was a twisted cascade that was as fast as light and inescapable. The gravitational shift that drove forward at light speed, hitting the warrior's skull after he just recovered mobility!

Gravity, which exists across all worlds and all things across the multiverse, is universally overwhelming and inescapable.

The gravity wave created by Akhar was the same. As the unstoppable crooked undulation that surged, it bypassed Joshua's skin that could withstand heat at thousands of degrees, slip through the complex muscle composition that was tougher than steel before penetrating orichalcum divine bones, striking the warrior at his most vulnerable brain!

With a single strike that concussed the skull, Joshua's openings ejected fountains of red-black blood. Having just stood up, the warrior froze before kneeling on the ground on one foot, unmoving.

One hit one kill! The gravity lance drive that struck at the genuine speed of light was virtually a lightspeed spear that killed innumerable powerful foes for Akhar, one of his trump cards that helped him establish the Central Empire all by himself. But even when he saw that his attack had struck true on Joshua and bled him from his mouth and nose, the knight did not dare let his guard down.

Because he knew that the greatest weakness of his own attack was its sub-par energy level.

All things were formed from several fundamental energies, gravity being just one of them.

It was the most majestic energy that permeates the multiverse, and according to the Celestial Saint's observation, nothing so far had appeared capable of blocking this phenomenon across the many different worlds.

However, unlike the drive of similar energies such as 'power of the link between all things', 'power of the core in all things', and the 'power of decline in all things', the destructive power of gravity was several levels lower.

That was why, a millennium ago, when Akhar had used his gravity lance to strike the weak points of Divine-domain monsters such as the Lodestone Splendor Dragon and the Four-armed Stone Core Giant when he hunted them, he was unable to deal a fatal blow.

It was not the time to celebrate!

And reality verified the fact.

Seeing that Akhar was prudent enough to not approach him, Joshua who appeared maimed and frozen rose again, his movement so agile and complete it did not appear impeded. Nonetheless, the knight's strike was not without effect—the blood that spilled out from the warrior's nose and mouth had lost all liveliness. Pouring down on the ground, it penetrated the sand as if steel water, shaping a small crater. Joshua left eye was utterly blown up too albeit regenerating rapidly.

Shaking his head to shrug the blood away from his face, Joshua looked up at Akhar in the sky. His eyes, now completely healed, glinted with excitement.

"Manipulating gravity. It's really almost cheating." Joshua muttered in a deep voice. "Luckily, I know some of it too!"

Gripping the swordspear, earth and rock started to orbit around the warrior as if weightless. Joshua's own substantial vigor was at a level that could autonomously influence electromagnetic fields surrounding his body. He no longer needed to use the recoil of aura to fly, instead float as he wished with anti-gravity force.

That was why, while the knight's spear did strike his brain, the natural lifeforce barrier in his skull shaved off ninety percent of the power behind the blow, avoiding lethal damage.

Even so, against an enemy whose first ordinary strike almost cost his life, Joshua felt not a hint of fear. Instead, a curious thrill rose from the bottom of his heart. Without question, Akhar, a former Divine-domain champion now at Heavenly-pinnacle was his best and most equal opponent. Battling against him, Joshua could unleash his full-power or perhaps even more, and such was the greatest delight and excitement for a warrior!

Meanwhile, unlike Joshua, Akhar was not in a great mood. Seeing that his ultimate move really turned out to be fruitless, the warrior could only lightly sigh inwardly.

However, he did not hesitate to use his next move—the emperor of a bygone millennium stood in the air and clenched his spear in utmost seriousness. Multifarious starlight thus started to rise and fall between the sky and the ground before assembling on the silver-white body of the lance.

Dazzling and beautiful stardust spread across all direction, encircling the lance like a galaxy.

As the singularity appeared, Joshua also promptly felt the weight around him promptly vanishing—or to be precise, it was the lance itself turning into the very concept of gravity and weight as it emanated the starlight singularity! The warrior's gaze now affixed on the polearm that was reminiscent of a galaxy itself, and under Akhar's anonymous technique, pieces of boulders hundred of meters wide cracked and left the surface of the earth. Rapidly shattering, the boulders churned into weightless and ever-present dust, dancing across the earth.

Joshua, standing upon the land, naturally rose with the rocks to the sky. He did sit and wait for Akhar's move that was clearly another lethal one, sprinting immediately towards the knight immediately, taking one step after another as he rose to the air, Dragonslayer Swordspear in hand.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Joshua's every step appeared to be treaded upon immeasurably solid ground. Since he was denied gravity, he created his own stepping spots. By using several times the amount of aura he usually used, the warrior could shape bases where he could rest his foot. Whether it was vacuum or mud, stone or air, Joshua could place his every step on his own aura.

At the same time, the warrior created an empty dimension around him. And in that environment where gravity was not barred, he darted towards Akhar at several times the speed of sound!

Boom!

It was a short but resounding crash! In an instant that barely allowed a thought, Joshua arrived before Akhar. The Dragonslayer Swordspear has yet to cool from that diagonal swipe before, but already, the crimson body of the spear stabbed out directly at the knight's skull, forming an arc light akin to a meteorite across the atmosphere!

However, Akhar's preparations were complete in that very instant.

[Falling Stars]!

The knight seemed to hold a galaxy in his two hands, and within it was all the weight of endless lands within dozens of square kilometers. If Joshua's attack before was as if a metaphorical 'mountain' crashing down, Akhar's blow was a little 'mountain' pummel!

Completely engulfed in starlight, the orichalcum lance was now seemingly a celestial body in itself, bearing a cumbersome and terrifying energy that was not at all stagnant. Splitting thunder blasted the air one after the other, and with a slight shift of position, several hundreds of square kilometers were comprehensively devoured by the pure-white air current.

And against Joshua's own swordspear that came stabbing at several dozen times the speed of sound, Akhar had zero intention of dodging. Holding his own lance steadily and solemnly, he thrust out too!

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom—

As if the stars were truly falling, incredible soundwaves tore across the land while the silver lance propelled out in a simple manner. In comparison, the 'light' Dragonslayer Swordspear was virtually sent flying away from Joshua's hands by the horrifying shockwave without any resistance.

Thus, the silver lance immediately cut the warrior's right hand into minced meat, completely penetrating his right chest and pounding it into ash!

Under the brutal gravity ripple and the colossal billion-ton pressure, even Joshua's flesh could not withstand that brief second.

Still, Akhar's gaze froze. He was certainly delighted by the outcome but he was unsure how things would turn out like this—given the warrior's ability, even if he had no way of blocking the Falling Stars, he would never be so unwise as to send himself to death!

And very soon, he had no time to think.

The warrior who had half his chest shattered did not fall along with his spear—behind him, innumerable drops of blood autonomously assemble the ionic energy in the world around them, turned black rapidly and detonated. The phenomenal momentum thus briskly sent the warrior who was smiling ferociously directly in front of Akhar.

Then, a tremendous punch capable of shattering peaks built from adamantium into powder swung out!