Soul of Searing Steel
chapter-577

Chapter 577: Pursuit on Beam System Part One

Heavy punches that transcended space hence struck the Void Mother’s tentacles at speeds in which the most precise observation apparatus could not determine. Stunning explosions and shockwaves, carrying the incredible illumination from the sun’s core rapidly spread—where Joshua struck, the Void Mother’s tens of thousands of gigantic tentacles and body that had squirmed to the Beam System began to undulate as if tidal waves. A thousand meters of scars and tears promptly appearing over its tremendous body and appendages, while infinite dark green viscous fluids ejected out of it but were incinerated into nothingness by nuclear fusion.

A thousandth of a second after the first punch struck, the second, the third, and up to hundreds of powerful punches followed closely behind. Bellowing while sweeping all four fists, Joshua was wildly bombarding the Void Mother on the other end of space like a pile driver. The incandescent white gases that shot out as he accelerated formed a layer of vapor but was dispersed by his rapid movements. Against an unprecedented foe, the warrior’s mind had nothing else but one thought!

Who cares, he shall greet it—by striking it with dozen thousand heavy jabs!

Meanwhile, in the docks of the Sea God Star Fortress on the central trail of the Beam System, the First and Second Fleet that were undergoing high-speed repairs suddenly detected an abrupt explosion of supreme psionic energies and forceful detonations on their ship radars. Information of red alert levels was delivered to and from different ranks, finally arriving to the fleets’ respective Commanders who were having an emergency meeting.

“The Void Mother has warped here so quickly?” The Commander of the First Fleet—a Midgardian with red leaves as hair struck the table angrily and gritted his teeth. “I knew the warp traps would never stop it! It’s a pity, but the Third Fleet must be lost by now.”

The Commander of the Second Fleet as well as other present officers nodded in agreement, and began to silently mourn their comrades who covered their retreat unselfishly. However, before the brief mourning was over, the psionic guild field in the exclusive warp zone of the Sea God Star began to display intense warp signatures, the urgent ripples turning every officer’s heads in astonishment.

“Psionic warp?! Are the Void aberrations here already?!”

“Enemy? No, this signature should be —”

Due to warp movement being faster than the opening, before everyone could rise from their chairs and rush to the screen, hundreds of silver-blue psionic vortices widened simultaneously as the Third Fleet appeared within the guarded perimeter of the Sea God Star, their flagship the ‘Shatterer’ in the lead.

“The Third Fleet? What’s going on!” The two fleet Commanders in the meeting room was left in great shock at the sight of their comrades’ survival. However, a strong suspicion filled their hearts even as they were delighted and surprised by their friends’ return—logically speaking, the encirclement by two million aberrations and the Void Mother would force them into painful and urgent retreat even if they had the Central Midgardian Fleet with them, much less come back in mostly one piece.

“What is going on?” Being a decisive Midgardian, the Commander of the First Fleet quickly close his eyes and psionically linked himself to the Third Fleet’s main control channel, as well as with Sina, the Third Fleet’s commander with his own authority. It was a long time until he finally opened his eyes to the point of bulging.

“The Void Beings came as reinforcements from the Mother Planet?!” He exclaimed in disbelief. “How is that possible—”

Despite those words, he swiftly ordered his crew to calibrate the control room and turn on the psionic observation equipment on the other end of the Beam System to project images from another end of space through endless distance onto the huge screen of the meeting room. When the long-distance equipment activated, videos of the battle on the edge of the Beam System were thus relayed before the Midgardians—although all they saw was flashes like those from the sun, along with huge explosions beneath the flashes that were suffocating to even look at.

On the other end of space, Joshua roared, waving his right fist to gather immeasurable energies that transmuted space itself under its profound energy ripples, and without delay, he struck out rapidly. In an instant, a spiraling and fearsome jab blasted the Void Mother’s body across space!

In full-power mode at the moment, each of Joshua’s punches were one tenth of a lightspeed and had the impact of thirty thousand kilometers per second. Additionally, with his Psionic Soar status exceeding several million tons in mass, the power of each punch was as terrifying as a thought! Wrapped in such inconceivable strength, each of his strikes would grow infinite flesh mushrooms and gigantic craters over the Void Mother’s body like a hydrogen bomb, with endless toxic fluids and tissue turned to dark green fog packing more than half the psionic vortex portal under powerful heat and impact, wafting away along with energy undulation.

At the same time, the old mage laughed heartily even as he shifted the portals near the Void Mother as much as he liked—Joshua was in charge of throwing punches, while he, Nostradamus, was in charge of where the punches fell. With the Legendary mage’s spiritual prowess that were sensitive to a nanometer degree, he sharply determined each weak point and energy joint on the Void Mother’s tentacle, and thereafter manipulated the portal and poured the warrior’s fists upon it!

As Joshua’s silently unleashed his full-power blow and hit one colossal tentacle with impact and heat that trembled even the dimensions, the rubbery but sturdy appendage that was roughly twenty kilometers long and over three kilometers thick broke at once, with huge sheets of dark green fog of blood and shattered shell bursting away as clusters of fireworks for the universe. The translucent gale shaped by the shockwaves from the energy wafted away at the intimidating speed of several thousand kilometers per hour towards the Void, capable of burning a stray asteroid into cinders.

In the Sea God Star Fortress, the three Fleet Commanders—Sina has now joined the meeting two—looked on in incredulity, their mouths gaping.

“Tentacles… the Void Mother’s Tentacles are all blasted away!”

And the truth was just so. In his brief yet ‘friendly’ first ‘greeting’ with the Void Mother, Joshua had punched the Void incalculable times briskly with Nostradamus’s aid, sending every tentacle which it was using to climb to the edge of the Beam System flying away overwhelmingly. Even a part of its true body that had passed through the psionic vortex, was reduced to a sheet of blood and flesh!

The Void Mother had also almost canceled its teleportation by the warrior’s series of assault to hurry back to the other end of space—the reason ‘almost’ being that legions of smaller Void aberrations were slipping out of from their hiding place in Psionic Space and beginning to advance, encircling Joshua and Nostradamus menacingly.

In that brief second, even the observation lens that relayed to the Sea God Star could only capture darkness as millions of Void monsters incessantly activated psionic vortices and slipped out of sub-space, besieging the warrior and old mage. Seemingly without end, the army of aberrations hence covered the stars and the universe, their dark shells absorbing all light and dying the entire edge of the Beam System black.

Stopping, Nostradamus and Joshua quickly opened a pale-blue doorway and led the warrior on an emergency warp to a corner outside the aberration encirclement. It was that moment that the swarm started to emit psionic radiances as they unleashed the psionic cage that had almost sealed Joshua just before, and the old mage could not help exhaling once in relief.

Unlike Joshua who was made of thick muscles and capable of reversing corruptions, he did not have much in way of freeing himself from a psionic cage if the dimensions were sealed for him—it would be trouble if he was locked up.

Sensing that their prey they had been prepared to encircle had freed themselves, the aberration swarm changed their formations like water from a sphere to a long black tide and surged towards where the two was. At the same time, the Void Mother sent its terrible view over the Void and locked onto the space where the pair was.

That way, Nostradamus would have to consume dozens of times the energy for another short-distance warp, a move which demerits completely outweighed any merit. Still, the two had already considered such a situation when they were watching the psionic vortex, their countermeasures unquestionably at the ready.

“‘Operation Bombardment’ on hold, begin ‘Operation Purge’!” Nostradamus laughed in delight over their spiritual link. “Ready? Joshua!”

“Cut the crap. Hurry!” Joshua replied rather impatiently, having just stopped brandishing his fists to allow his body and arm joints to cool down. “You’re not the one laboring—alright, support me!”

Even so, he was unwittingly showing a cruel yet savage smile that scared the divine armaments and luminous orb that were spectating in his spiritual space.

Nostradamus was not concerned, however. He had seen such a face innumerable times that was aroused by slaughter and combat albeit Joshua being undoubtedly the most fearsome and savage one. He summoned his own weapon out of nowhere—instantly, countless mysterious three-dimensional runes that stretched even the fourth dimension of time a flowed out of the grimoire, a tome that appeared plain but in fact recorded all that a Legendary mage had learned in life. It then turned into a golden-green boxing glove that wrapped over all four of Joshua’s fist, but the moment the warrior clenched his fists tightly, the small movement caused powerful dimensional ripples that tore huge layers of space apart in the shattered traces.

[Ability Endowment—Void Resonance]!

It was one of the combinations that both Legendary champions had discussed before. Joshua had wanted some equipment he used before and named it ‘Berserker Gloves’, but the elderly mage who did now know what meaning was there in that name insisted on ‘Void Fist’– the pair subsequently compromised and hence came up with such a strange name.

Even so, in the time that the two were working together, the Void swarm that came roaring like a storm and blanketing the stars had streamed towards them at three thousandth of one lightspeed amidst the silence of vacuum. The violent presence of the Chaos army could seemingly crumple everything and perhaps crashed through a planet if it suddenly obstructed them!

And Joshua’s equally quiet and solemn fist welcomed them!

Four arms and four fists shot out across space back and forth violently like a Gatling Gun, fearsome and forceful as if mountains were crashing down directly. But in fact—

The area of effect of those punches was broader than mountain ranges!

Boom!!!

In the vacuum, black fissures of shattered dimensions engulfed a spherical diameter of ten kilometers within the vastness of the universe, with the warrior’s fists at its center! It was as if each fist that Joshua swung would strike every spot within several square kilometers! Before the dozen thousands of aberrations in the lead could even cry out, they were already turned into bits and pieces in the dimensional fissures that rolled as if tides! The three fleets watching in the Sea God Star Fortress were unable to comprehend what all of that had been, and yet it was happening now so unreasonably!

Nostradamus, his strength nearly exhausted, could only watch through heavy gasps of air as Joshua quickly purge tide after tide of Void aberrations. The elderly mage laughed in pleasure in between a few coughs, reached out to his own chin before remembering that he was now an incarnation of the dimension and hence had no beard, and that his human middle-aged form did not have any beard either. Even so, such a little episode did not affect his excitement.

As the name suggested, the old mage’s skill ‘Ability Endowment—Void Resonance’ could spread the power of the Endowed to his surroundings in its entirety. The area of effect would have been at most several meters for Silver dimensional mages albeit being a high-level cleave move, while it would almost a hundred meters for Gold-tier—a true harvester in the battlefield. It was even more frightening when it comes to Supreme-tier since the user would become an invincible berserker warrior who could stand against ten thousand, but for Legendary-tiers—especially with two working together and empowered with Joshua’s Psionic Soar status, the Resonating area would reach an unimaginable standard.

A sphere that stretched over a dozen kilometers, its actual volume above a thousand kilometers squared!

So what did mean?

Joshua could pulverize a city with a punch! A destroyer of the land’s surface, a skill that a destroyer of continents possessed!

Nevertheless, it would be frivolous if Nostradamus used that skill for himself because he was not that powerful, but it would be different for the warrior. From what the old mage could tell, the power of the warrior who could break through to Legendary through sheer supremacy of strength had multiplied exponentially after having received his ability endowments!

Soon, the viciously cascading tides of aberrations were sent flying like the stray dogs they were, hurriedly retreating under the urgent orders of the Void Mother. In just a dozen seconds, almost one-fourth of their grand sum was lost—it was accelerated suicide just like throwing oneself into a meat grinder!

Noting that the aberrations were not coming for their own deaths, Joshua too stopped his blows and heavily panted out thick, incandescent white vapors. The golden-green dimensional gloves on his arms had quickly shattered after he stopped punching, turning into multifarious dimensional shards. Having used more than half his energy, the warrior activated the Nuclear Heart by his chest, and a cyclone of energy therefore billowed towards the pulps that had once been Void creatures, shrinking and condensing them into fuel for the Furnace.

It was in that time that the Void Mother finally passed through its portal in its entirely thanks to the swarm’s delay. Enraged, it promptly launched its counter-attack once it saw Joshua who was absorbing substantial amounts of mass to recover his energy consumption and Nostradamus who was in the middle of a battle meditation to regenerate mana and spiritual power.

The Void Mother’s appearance was reminiscent of a sea urchin grown full of tentacles that had grown billionfold. Streaks of long openings which were its mountainous gigantic reproductive tracts extended over its body that resembled smiles incessantly sprayed out diverse species of Void creatures. In front of its body were countless tentacles that had been slit off but was regenerating swiftly, while a single dark colossal spot—a Chaos observation organ that was similar to an insectoid compound eye was fixed upon Joshua and Nostradamus, emanating infinite malevolence and coldness.

Having no intention of pausing, space itself curled and arched as the asteroid-class Void Mother dragged its behemothic body that was close to a thousand kilometers. Like a supremely colossal spaceship, it shot out dark-green psionic flames over several hundred kilometers that closed in upon the warrior’s party and carrying psionic shielding that was as thick as several kilometers. Suddenly, both Nostradamus and Joshua’s expressions changed. The full-speed attack from the thousand-meter class of the Void Mother was totally different from the Void swarm before—it could deviate a planet from its orbit, or even sink an entire continent!

Furthermore, the Void Mother now wore a defensive shield that was several kilometers thick, not like before when it was traveling through portals! Both Nostradamus and Joshua therefore did not believe that the Dimensional Resonance and the Nuclear Fusion Lightspeed Punch would do anything for the inconceivably tough gravity psionic shield.

That was also why Nostradamus clapped his hand on Joshua’s shoulder and opened another pale-blue portal to the other end of the Void Mother’s charge. Nonetheless, the Void Mother appeared to sense the dimensional undulation and quickly turned at a manner that was out of place for a thousand-meter behemoth and crashed towards the two again. At the same time, it cast a dimensional lock to restrain Nostradamus’s warping, only for the old mage to swiftly open another portal and evade that blow.

In no time at all, the three superior lifeforms began a rapid but intense chase around the vast space of the universe—and unwittingly approached the interior of the Beam System in a high-speed mobile warfare that was fast closing in on the sun of the Beam System!

Within the Sea God Star Fortress.

“They are rapidly closing in on the system’s core!”

“Trajectory shift! Another trajectory shift! Commander, it’s certain that they are heading toward our direction!”

“The two Void Beings that came as reinforcements from the Mother Planet appear able to sense the direction of the Sea God Star Fortress! They are quickly coming towards us at a diagonal angle of sixty-seven degrees!”

“Heavens! That speed!”

In the meeting room within the fortress, urgent and raucous communications filled every psionic channel. The three respective Fleet Commanders, however, took no notice and merely widened their eyes that were glued upon the indistinct videos relayed from the Midgardian Psionic Particle Sensor in real time.

The broadcast of the high-speed showed that the gigantic Void Mother had actually caught up to the seemingly more agile pair of Legendary champions, and had volleyed a dozen-kilometer long tentacle at them straight away, which was essentially a valley of flesh given its thickness of several kilometers! The extraordinary physical of the Chaos beast sturdy enough to transcend dimensional turbulences in the Multiverse was completely capable of handling such unimaginable physical movements—the psionic shielding that enshrouded it notwithstanding, its mass could cause half a continent to quake if it hits a planet!

However, on the other end of space, neither Joshua nor Nostradamus evaded the fearsome attack. The warrior even laughed coldly once and allowed the beast’s blows to freely strike his own body, but it left everyone gaping that the giant tentacles swing simply and ‘floatingly’ went pass the warrior and mage as if missing its mark.

“Did it miss?!”

“No, it really went pass them!”

Fountains of green blood vented violently out of the Void Mother’s tentacle that had been volleyed out just now, with a grotesque wound that over a thousand meters wide now appearing on the center of that appendage. Everyone understood at once—against the mountainous collision of flesh, the two Legends did nothing to dodge, piercing the Void Mother with their bodily defenses that were a class above and by borrowing the momentum of the attack instead!

“Funny. Joshua, your body is the toughest I’ve ever seen—even the secret dwarven alloy that combines adamantine and orichalcum does not compare.” Nostradamus teased in their spiritual space even as they moved speedily.

“And I have no physical form at all—once I cancel my psionic shield, its physical attack is meaningless!”

On the other hand, Joshua did not reply as he quickly calculated his path and the Void Mother’s speed. A dozen seconds later, his lips curled in revealed a faint smile.

“Almost in position.”

In reality, the warrior was beginning to be irritated by the Void Mother’s reluctance to show its trump card and purely relied upon its tentacles to attack with the mere intent of wearing the physical energy of mage and warrior. That was why Joshua did no look back, even as the two arms over his shoulders twisted into another direction and—without him ever shifting—conjured a white greatsword and a black greataxe to tear through the Void Mother’s tentacles through Steel Sword and Dimensional Tear, cutting off the kilometers-long appendage. The Void Mother, however, used its other tentacles to catch its torn appendage and attach to its wounds. In a dozen seconds, it was completely healed!

In spite of all that, the move was futile as Nostradamus launched his own countermove as well. Within the brief time the Void Mother recovered, he mustered his power while moving in acceleration, before shooting a powerful bolt of energy at its energy joints. Distinct signs of burns appeared over the wound that had just very obviously healed before the torn part fell off again—this time, the Void Mother had no way of healing and lost that appendage in its whole.

But the most fearsome aspect of the enemy was not its frivolous tentacle volleys. Upon seeing that they could not harm the Legendary duo in any meaningful manner, the endless smaller Void beasts that had been catching up behind the Void Mother by using the energy stream it sprays for mobility had begun to flicker with psionic illumination under its command, and, by burning their life essence, began to fuse!

In the Sea God Star Fortress, the three Fleet Commanders watched the spectacle breathlessly through the grainy images from the Psionic Particle Sensor.

The infinite Void aberrations were showing an ability they never used before! Thousands of droplet-shaped Scout-class monsters were combining into oval-shaped Main Force-Class aberrations, while dozens of Main Force-class fused into fusiform-shaped kilometer-class! Soon, almost ten Kilometer-class began to fuse into a superior disc-shaped form!

“They’re actually fusing!?” Joshua cursed. He did not look back, and yet could sense the monumental shift from behind as if he was seeing it with his own eyes. “Even I don’t know how to do that! How could these aberrations do that!

Who were the superior beings here—us or them!

Hence, the two arms behind the warrior’s back swung out in rage while Nostradamus opened dimensional fissures simultaneously.

Regardless of how sensational it was to the eye, the surface layer of defenses of the Void Mother was never once pierced in the end. Four Nuclear Fusion Lightspeed Punches hence shot out at the fusing superior aberrations, the explosive heavy punches blasting them like an atomic bomb and producing million-degrees heatwave and explosion. With no way of resisting, the behemoths were hence shattered, incinerated and crushed into infinite pieces. Joshua even stopped to punch the Void Mother’s body a few times albeit with undesirable effects—along with powerful flashes, a huge dent appeared over the psionic gravity shield covering the Void Mother’s body, with concentric ripples resembling waves hence spreading to every corner of the shield as if the ocean roars.

Furthermore, after having been delayed by their own offensive, Joshua and Nostradamus decelerated by a notch—for a high-speed chase that was going on at the thousandth of one lightspeed as its basic unit, a notch meant the allowing one’s opponent to cover the distance of several hundred of kilometers. In no time at all, the two were caught up by the multitudinous Colossal aberrations and superior bodies.

The dense ranks of Pestilence minions, the virus of the universe hence surged like ants and bees that had seen innumerable delicious food and pollen, tearing at them with the might of mountains and seas!