Chapter 31: The Power of Steel
Forty-four years ago, in the year 789 of the Falling Stars Era, in the western mountainous region, on the border of a small kingdom.
In the Black Forest on the border of this Western Mountain Kingdom, a pack of ferocious magical beasts, driven by instinct, attacked a nearby border town on a certain winter day.
The attack was so sudden that the border town was breached by the magical beasts without any resistance. The bloodthirsty monsters broke through the stone walls, effortlessly slaughtering most of the humans within the town. They crunched bones, tore flesh, and spewed flames and frost, turning the entire settlement into a ruin.
The caught-off-guard garrison had already sent out a distress signal, but what arrived before the kingdom's army was a group of mysterious black-clad figures.
These strange men, wearing hooded robes that completely shrouded them in black, were unexpectedly powerful. They used eerie spells to drive away the magical beasts within the town, then hurriedly searched back and forth, looking for something. For the few survivors left in the town, the black-clad men showed no pity or sympathy. They roughly gathered these people together and then inspected them repeatedly.
Finally, a middle-aged man with eyes as sharp as an eagle or owl found a calm boy in a corner of the crowd. The dark red compass in his hand trembled violently, its needle pointing firmly at the boy.
This boy had long, dark green hair, and his delicate little face was stained with blood, but it wasn't his own. Even having experienced a magical beast attack on the city, his expression didn't change in the slightest. He remained perfectly calm, as if the blazing city around him didn't exist at all.
"Are you looking for me?"
Completely unconcerned by the scrutinizing gazes of the surrounding black-clad men, the boy turned his head, looked at the middle-aged man, and said softly, "I can see the excitement in your heart. It seems I am indeed your target."
"That's right." Hearing the boy's words, the middle-aged man could no longer suppress the ecstasy in his heart. He laughed heartily, then bent down and stroked the boy's face: "My prophesied child, for seven whole years, we have finally found you!"
The gathered survivors immediately erupted in commotion. A middle-aged woman stepped forward trembling, pointing at the boy with fear, her voice quivering: "Honored sirs, this child... he, he is very strange! No matter what livestock or crops, as soon as he touches them, they get sick or even wither. Even his parents..."
She had intended to warn the black-clad men who had saved their lives to be careful of the boy's strangeness, but in the next moment, a gray beam struck the woman, instantly decomposing her into a pool of viscous acid and bones.
Amidst the panicked screams of the crowd, the middle-aged man who had just released the disintegration ray said to the surrounding black-clad men in a cold tone: "This matter is the greatest secret of the Order... Silence them."
"Yes, High Priest!" Upon hearing this, the black-clad men grinned wickedly, raised their weapons, and turned to the trembling survivors.
Blood splattered.
The bloody massacre began, yet the cute boy with dark green hair showed no change in expression. From start to finish, he watched it all coldly. Whether it was the man who was so enthusiastic towards him, called the High Priest, or the neighbors he had lived with for nearly ten years, who were now being slaughtered like pigs and dogs, they all seemed insignificant to him.
Life is fragile, like the white frost at noon, vanishing in an instant. He had known this long ago. The boy had been very clear about this since the day his parents died.
"Helras, you are unique, a treasure bestowed upon this world by my Lord."
Without any concern for the massacre happening beside him, the middle-aged man stood by the boy's side, speaking with barely contained excitement: "You carry the blood of the void, possessing the power to absorb and control life! You were born to join us!"
Perhaps so.
In the boy's eyes, clumps of gray-white spiritual substance, mixed with turbid life energy, detached from the corpses on the ground, transforming into all sorts of strange shapes in the air. And the boy knew he could manipulate them at will, as easily as controlling his own arm.
Ever since the accident that killed his parents a few years ago, the boy named Helras began to deliberately train his power. From then on, whether it was others' or his own, the boy could easily control it, then absorb it into his body. Making livestock weak and plants wither was just the most basic ability. If Helras wished, he could even directly take a person's life, making them 'age' and die.
Perhaps this was the power of the 'Void Blood' the middle-aged man spoke of.
And mortals feared this power. They kept their distance from him. The people of this town had tried more than once to expel Helras, but they never succeeded. Any strong man who came within five meters of the boy would collapse to the ground, weak as if he hadn't eaten for days. His gaze could even strip away the courage of a crowd, causing the gathered people to scatter.
At least these people were willing to accept me. Helras thought this, and so he followed the black-clad men back to their base, a temple deep in the mountains.
He spent twenty years there.
During these twenty years, the former boy grew into a youth, and from a youth into a young man. Finally, on a fierce blizzard night, the twenty-eight-year-old Helras replaced his teacher, the middle-aged man from years past, and became the High Priest of this underground cult.
The extremely aged old priest looked at his student, murmuring, as if wanting to say something. The man could see a gigantic vortex of life spinning around the other, drawing in the life force of all living things within hundreds of meters. His own aging was precisely because of this. Otherwise, with his Gold Peak power, he could have lived for at least another ten or twenty years.
But what did it matter? The old cult leader felt no resentment. He looked at his student, who had surpassed him, and couldn't help but show a weak smile. Helras's strength had already exceeded his, touching the edge of the Ultimate Realm. This was a realm the old man had only reached in his fifties.
He was willing to die, using his own corpse as a stepping stone for the other.
Helras naturally saw this.
"Don't worry, Teacher," the man said, his tone calm. "I will fulfill your wish."
So the old priest closed his eyes.
The affairs of the cult were dull and tedious, nothing more than causing destruction everywhere, spreading plagues, and proclaiming that the end was surely coming. But Helras took them seriously, completing them one by one without any irritation or slack, as if he were a tireless machine.
He didn't understand good or evil, nor did he care about them. Killing and destroying were no different to him than eating and drinking. Although this man didn't even know the ultimate goal of the cult he belonged to, his actions represented a truly mindless chaos. Countless cultists worshipped him for this, worshipping this man who was as simple as a beast.
Though titled High Priest, Helras held no real power within the cult. Several priests under him held all the authority, but he didn't care about such trivial matters at all. The man just spread chaos day after day, doing what he was supposed to do. Because of this, the man's name gradually spread throughout the entire western mountainous region.
Having destroyed over a dozen towns and killed tens of thousands of humans, the cult's High Priest, the titles 'Withered One Helras' and 'Emissary of Decay' were enough to stop children from crying, to the point where the name itself became a curse.
And the man's strength grew day by day, as if without limit.
The speed of Helras's power increase shocked the kingdoms of the entire western region. Every time he appeared, his strength had noticeably improved. Gold Peak, Ultimate Realm, Ultimate Realm Initial Stage, Ultimate Realm Mid Stage, all the way to Ultimate Realm Peak. From being insignificant to becoming a major threat to the Western Kingdom Alliance, the man took only a dozen or so years. This was even considering that, as the cult's leader, he couldn't cultivate all the time. Otherwise, Helras's strength would surely have been even greater.
The encirclements and suppressions against Helras all ended in several tragic failures. In the most recent one, the power he displayed terrified everyone—three veteran Ultimate Realm experts joined forces, yet he killed two of them in return. There were no obvious wounds on the two bodies; they seemed to have died merely from normal aging. This meant his power was gradually breaking free from the limits of the Ultimate Realm, beginning to extend into the Legendary domain.
A Legendary-rank cult priest—just the thought of it made the rulers of many small kingdoms without Legendary experts tremble with fear.
But all of this meant nothing to Helras. The now middle-aged man walked silently through the winter dense forest. Wherever he passed, plants withered, and all life decayed. All life force was plundered and absorbed into his body.
The power of life is the power of Steel. Whether it's battle qi or bloodline power, it's all the same.
But legend has it that at the dawn of creation, there were ancient beasts roaming the void. What flowed within their bodies was not the power of life, but the purest crystallization of Steel.
Those who possess a similar power can naturally manipulate the lives of those of a lower order. Helras had a vague premonition that once the vast, ocean-like life force within him condensed into a Steel crystal, that would be the moment he achieved Legendary status.
Of course, not now, but in the future.
The man, who knew neither good nor evil, understood no morality, was as savage as a beast, and as regular as a machine, ceased his meaningless internal thoughts.
His target was the Northern Lands.
And in the Northern Lands, Moldavia, late at night.
Joshua stood in the Lord's Manor and said, "I will set out tomorrow, heading for Moldova."
The warrior didn't seem to be announcing his decision, but rather talking to himself: "I have a feeling that by fighting an evenly matched opponent, I can perceive the essence of the Power of Steel more clearly... It's probably Ogana's gift. Ever since that time, my intuition has been very reliable."
"Mm." From within Joshua's embrace, the young boy and girl responded softly. They were the warrior's Divine Mechanisms, his weapons. Whatever their master decided to do, they would never oppose, only support.
This was trust.
Because of this most loyal trust, they would accompany the warrior, all the way to the end of this world.