Soul of Searing Steel
chapter-795

Chapter 795: Corruption

Incomparable light and shockwaves akin to a supernova descended upon the Sealed World!

The mighty power of Order tore the body of the Chaos planet apart at an unbelievable speed, incandescent silver light speedily neutralized and eroded Chaos power at the cost of diminishing itself. The Chaos presence that engulfed the nine moons began to diminish after crashing down on the Evil God of Wither, dispersing.

At the depths of the moons were ancient, rotting wrecks of warships. The warped tentacles and appendages appeared to have extended out of the broken windows and valves of those warships, hence expanding to the shape of a planet.

Three-fourths of the Chaos planet were shattered by the supreme explosion, with the planet’s crust, mantle and even part of its core partly blown away. The erratic and gluttonous power of the Evil God which intended to corrupt the entire world at present was beaten back to its original form and almost insignificant.

At the planet’s core, a metallic sphere that resembled an iron wire ball whirled without stopping, bound by flowing runic radiance… it may be the earliest form of the Evil God Seal and the initial form of the Sealed Planet, but that sealing circle had completely deteriorated, its once silver construct now a dark red as if rusted.

At present, Joshua, who was only left if his core mass half-knelt over the metal sphere seal. His eyes closed and his brow furrowed, he adjusted to adapt into his weaker body, while abandoning most of his supernatural organs.

The frivolous Chaos energy on the outer perimeter had been cleared away by the self-destructing mass he triggered, while the strength stored by the Evil God of Wither over several thousand years had also been purged by his self-imploding might. Turning degenerate matter into normal particles? It was simply too standard—Joshua just needed a little push when the Evil God of Wither wilted himself, turning eighty percent of his own body mass into a burning plasma cloud!

There was truly no telling whether the ultra-dense degenerate matter and the rapidly expanding plasma cloud it converted into when considered in terms of instant damage. After all, a single star in all of the universe is a mere dot, but if it expanded and burst into a nebula that filled the stars, it would engulf a profound region. When such an explosive process was triggered by both the warrior and the Evil God, the destructive force would increase exponentially!

As for the decreased mass, he could think of it as dieting—no loss.

Furthermore, the self-destruct had cleared off all accumulated Chaos energy in the planet. By looking at the massive sealing circle at the planet’s core and the warship wrecks, Joshua slightly understood the idea those Legends who sealed the Evil God.

Although it appeared that the seal that they had made was excessively crude that deteriorated after being exposed to Wither’s naturally degeneration powers over thousands of years, allowing the Evil God to reawaken.

In truth, the Legends who had sealed the Evil God simple never considered what would happen millennia later.

Indeed, be it from the sealing formation type and its composition, those who had cast the seal simply did not intend to forge a semi-permanent sealing planet, instead quarantining the slumbering Evil God with what was essentially wire gauze—they never imagined that there would not be reinforcement even thousands of years later!

The Sage and those nine Legends must have been conducting an experiment to convert Chaos together at the time. They had definitely determined that, with the Evil God of Wither’s power as an origin point, they could revert Chaos into raw Steel Strength, and with that inspiration, the Sage returned to his homeworld to save Mycroft the Steel Python, while the nine Legends remained for the time being, watching over the body of the Evil God.

And yet, all that awaited the nine Legends was millennia of silence, and the effect of extreme Time Dilation.

The nine Legends could not leave the Sealed World. They were wardens, guarding the Evil God and sealing the Chaos, just as they were beings monitored by the Evil Gods and sealed by Chaos. The Evil God that had been just sealed and had great strength in store could directly awaken as a result should they leave, and yet the seal they designed would never be effective beyond fifteen hundred years.

In that long period, the nine Legends were slowly affected by the Evil God’s power, hence falling into a slumber while turning into nine sealing points condensed in the skies, enforcing regulation and suppression conservatively.

If there were no reinforcements in fifteen hundred years, it would mean that the Mycroft civilization was already vanquished and the revival of Evil Gods had nothing to do with them, and it was not something those who cast the seal needed to consider. But if there were reinforcements, no matter how weak they were but as long as there was a single force Order, the nine Hubs and warships could coordinate, even revive the nine slumbering Legends and subjugate the Evil God for another one or two millennia.

A period is long enough for a civilization to grow and succeed the Glorious Era.

The nine Legends and the Sage had certainly thought things through, but they never took Time Dilation into consideration… and a single dilation meant a five-thousand-year gap between two worlds.

It was a greater power than any seal.

But now, Joshua, who had clearly destroyed most of the Evil God’s vigor, somberly look at its true form that squirmed in its irregular state inside the spherical seal.

“Troublesome… So, the Sage’s inspiration in creating Grandia was found here.”

Joshua mumbled quietly and solemnly—things were definitely more troubling than he imagined. “I now mostly understand how the Evil God could gather so much power and break the seal.”

The warrior looked down, toward the sinister and distorted form of the Evil God behind the seal: a boundlessly profound dark shroud where infinite specks of different radiance flickered.

Those were souls—living souls of Order!

After the nine Legends had led their fleet to subjugate the Evil God and built the planet seal, the fleet crew had flourished in that planet, fighting and surviving. Meanwhile, there were also colonists of different races who mistakenly navigated here, and thus countless lives spread upon that planet over thousands of years, birthing and dying.

And yet that world was not a real one. An artificial Sealed World naturally could not allow the birth of a real Steel Python or Soul Cycle, and all departed souls would simply flow allowing the tide of Chaos that squirmed in the darkness, returning to the Evil God’s true form at the depths of the planet!

But this did not mean that those souls were utterly destroyed, for thanks to the nine Legends and the Sage’s intricate design, the one being eroded was the sealed Evil God instead.

The Souls of Order would conversely wilt the Evil God as if parasitic insects that drew human blood. The souls that latched onto the slumbering Evil God’s body would gradually weaken its essence over thousands of years. Not only were they not dead due to the Evil God, they obtained immortality from it—if the seal had lasted normally until the Evil God was ground away, those souls would unquestionably reincarnate into newborns with supreme talents, bringing a new wave of powerful fresh blood to the barren post-war Mycroft!

The world of Grandia might have been a product of a similarly constructed seal. However, because it was a prison to punish traitors, their perished souls did not grow alongside that world, becoming ambers frozen out of tree saps and finally becoming fertilizer for the world of Mycroft.

And yet that grand design had a single misstep—the wait was far longer than what everyone imagined.

At the moment, Joshua did not know how many thousand years actually stood between Mycroft and the Sealed World at the edge of galaxy, but according to the Great Khan it was at least twelve thousand years to galaxies beyond, perhaps more. It meant that there was at least a four-thousand-year difference with worlds here at minimum. After such a long time, even the finest of designs would go wrong, the great reduced to calamity, and the human souls that should be grinding down the Evil God corrupted into a breeding place of newborn Chaos.

Standing upon the seal, Joshua gazed upon the body of the Evil God, He could see millions of soul radiances flickering healthily at the edge of Chaos, unsullied by the Evil God’s corruption. That, however, was brief, for if the awakened entity be willing, it could corrupt every soul, and the only reason they remained untouched was because Wither had yet to awaken, and only that.

And now, it was about to—or more precisely, it has already awakened, but was in a daze after Joshua struck it.

Their souls remained but were now objects inside the embrace of Chaos. To kill the Evil God undoubtedly involve those souls, and none could guarantee their safety in the fight against the Chaos.

Nonetheless, Joshua would always be Joshua. Even if his heart stirred with all manners of complex emotions, unable to ascertain what outcome his choice would bring about…

He quickly made a decision, and swiftly resolved himself.

Whoosh —violent winds howled above the dilapidated planetary core.

Strength was gathering, the heightened energy presenting a quantum leap of power. Streaks of lightning sparked around the warrior’s four arms, blurring the boundary between matter and energy as the Giant Steel God visibly burnt all his remaining mass, converting it into a celestial strike that could shatter stars.

Joshua never once thought of saving everyone—the living was more important to him than departed souls.

Even so, in that very moment…

The Chaos ripples of the Evil God of Wither, which all of them had assumed to have lost all resistance suddenly rose from zero to unimaginable heights!

Catching on in an instant, Joshua, who had been prepared to abandon all lingering pity and crush the entire planetary core with a punch, the bulk of the Evil God of Wither which had been slowly squirming and whirling as if dead promptly burst away! It was a sensation akin to Joshua’s self-destructing mass before which cleared all Chaos presence that had accumulated in the world, a trick that the Evil God learned and applied!

Boom! Darkness spread at the speed of thought, enshrouding all without exception: Joshua, the nine moons warships along with the Nature’s Magister floating at the edge of the world, even Hub Accrafa and the Great Khan’s soul.

In a split second, the presence of Chaos filled the world and Void.