Chapter 48: The Atmosphere Evil God
In the multiverse, there are countless structures of worlds, and the light of the First Flame takes millions of forms.
In this unknown world, the beginning of all things was a crimson sky.
A massive red star hung in the cosmos, the faint light of a dying sun illuminating its three remaining planets. Countless tens of thousands of years had passed since its last expansion, and of the original seven planets in the star system, only the three most distant had survived.
The planet closest to this red giant had been tidally locked. Half of this rocky world endured eternal scorching heat, its crust melted, while the other half suffered freezing, dark ice, with residual gases liquefied and flowing through the cracks in the rock.
The second planet rotated at a bizarre, tilted angle. Overly violent solar winds had, countless years ago, instantly destroyed its atmosphere, disrupted its magnetic field, and the fierce impact had thrown its rotational axis into chaos.
The farthest planet from the red giant was a deep blue gas giant. Perhaps because of its great distance, it had remained unchanged by its mother star's expansion eons ago, continuing as always along its orbit, quietly turning in the darkness.
And it was here that everything began.
On the surface of the gas giant, violent and extreme currents raged. Rapidly flowing winds created one vortex after another on its surface, constantly merging and expanding, eventually growing into super storms hundreds or even thousands of kilometers in diameter. Even from beyond the heavens, this magnificent sight was clearly visible.
Joshua's consciousness awakened at this moment. He stood in the vacuum, momentarily not reacting, but in the next instant, the scene shifted, and he had entered the interior of this gas giant.
A sea of deep blue gas.
In this vast, surging atmospheric cloud sea, endless and unimaginably strange currents forever churned. The red giant, occupying at least two-thirds of the sky, illuminated all of this with its unwarm light. The warrior's spirit followed a mysterious guidance, moving deeper within. By the time Joshua understood where he was and felt shocked by it, he had already entered the relatively calm depths of the gas giant.
In the depths of the thin gas ocean, countless crystals, ice, or metallic fragments drifted with the currents. Energy from the planet's core pushed them outward, then gradually pulled them back. This process had continued for tens of millions of years since the planet's birth. The immense planetary mana, staggering to all existence, scoured these fine dust particles, over and over again.
Joshua watched this scene. Though he didn't know why he, who had been attacking the Evil God fragment, had suddenly appeared here, the warrior didn't mind. Instead, he observed the interior of the gas giant with interest.
Thinking of the astonishing structure inside the Evil God fragment, he couldn't help but have a premonition.
Soon, his premonition came true.
Time accelerated. Under the immense planetary mana, influenced by mana over countless millions of years, a peculiar life was born, centered on these insignificant material particles that had been completely assimilated by mana.
At first, they were formless, mindless clusters of energy. They drifted through the relatively calm gas sea, riding hurricanes that moved at hundreds of kilometers per second, absorbing mana from the planet's depths to grow. But due to the unstable outer structure of the gas giant, these lives could be destroyed at any moment by overly violent current shifts. Sensing the danger of their birth environment, they instinctively moved deeper into the planet, where pressure was greater.
These lives, with forms similar to elemental beings like air elementals, eventually settled in the more stable deep gas layers. They fed on the mana radiation released by the planet and communicated with each other using special mana fluctuations, essentially electromagnetic radiation. Tens of thousands of years passed, and their intelligence didn't grow much; naturally, no civilization was born. But these elemental lives, roaming the atmospheric sea, had their own unique social structure. Overly large gas beings would unite, creating an 'artificial' stable gas structure within the turbulence, splitting off parts of themselves inside to birth new offspring, releasing them all only when they grew strong enough to act independently in the gas sea, spreading their continuation like fungi spreading spores.
This peculiar life form, born within a gas giant, truly opened Joshua's eyes, but he knew this wasn't the end—it was merely the beginning.
Deep within the giant, the space suitable for gas life was limited. Stable regions were fewer than anyone imagined and were separated by countless raging vortices. Some gas beings, seeking new homes, resolutely flew toward the unstable surface, but the violent currents mercilessly tore apart all who dared to venture, and even the largest gas beings couldn't withstand storms exceeding hundreds of kilometers per hour.
Joshua watched this scene. Time in this illusion flowed at billions of times its normal speed. Thousands of years later, a gas being that attempted to compress its body appeared.
By compressing the gas that formed its body, condensing its internal energy into rapidly swirling winds, and shrinking its massive body, over a kilometer in radius, into a deep blue gaseous sphere only a few meters in size, this gas being finally, after a perilous adventure, broke through the barrier of violent storms and reached the planet's surface.
It saw the red giant, covering most of the sky and still expanding.
Elemental beings had no ability to distinguish colors, but it could sense that hanging above its head was almost... because some of the most powerful Gas had not died in this upheaval. Their gas shells, compressed to the extreme, had become barriers sturdy enough to withstand anything. They had survived this cataclysm.
The surviving Gas clung to the iron core of the gas giant—the only remnant of the world they had once lived in. But the iron core gradually cooled in the dark universe, and the sun, now a white dwarf, no longer emitted light or heat. These energy-feeding gas beings, in the lonely, cold darkness, sensed the mana radiation left by their companions, then slowly perished.
The illusion ended.
And a new Evil God was thus born.
In the dark void, the warrior watched this scene. The illusion from the Evil God fragment grew colder as it progressed. He felt as if he had personally experienced that despair of waiting for life to fade in the lonely vacuum. Joshua frowned. He had understood the origin of the illusion but didn't understand why it was so.
But a slightly weary male voice appeared out of nowhere, interrupting the warrior's thoughts.
"Thirteenth Evil God, tentatively named [Atmosphere]. Cause of formation possibly due to the influence of the First Evil God, [Plenty]."
A heavy, slightly hoarse voice echoed in the dark void. He seemed utterly exhausted, so his words were brief: "The [Atmosphere] Evil God did not come in person. What invaded the Northern Continent was only a part of its body. The situation in the void is urgent. After sealing part of its remains underground, I need to rush to the front lines. Please, any intelligent life hearing this message, notify the Chaos Research Institute as soon as possible. We cannot rule out the possibility of the Atmosphere Evil God descending again. As long as we quickly study its weaknesses, we can surely use them in the next encounter."
"Established by the Third Saint under the Sage, on the seventeenth day of October, in the year five thousand three hundred and nineteen of the Sacred Calendar."
Then came a brilliant slash of light, as if it could cleave stars, worlds, even the fabric of spacetime.
This slash of light cut through the dark illusion, and also cut through the Atmospheric Tentacle that had once descended from the sky. Holy light shone, and the chaotic Evil God retreated in response.
Joshua fully emerged from the illusion. He held his spear, now clear-headed, while beside him, Brandon's eyes were still somewhat dazed.
Before the two, the internal structure of the Evil God fragment had been completely destroyed by their attacks. The compressed chaotic wind, freed from the energy structure that bound it, wanted to erupt and ravage everything around, but this chaotic force was entirely dissolved by the order light pillars inside the sealed chamber, leaving only a wisp of deep blue smoke drifting where the black sphere had once been.
Hundreds or thousands of years had passed. Outside the sealed chamber, later generations had built another layer of steel shell. Craftsmen had engraved the scene of the Saint repelling the Evil God from long ago, but the researchers he had awaited never came—for some reason. Geological shifts, volcanic eruptions, rock layers rising into mountains—the seal of the past was completely buried underground.
Until now, two inheritors bearing the legacy of the Sage had arrived here.
"So... this is the truth of the Evil God's birth?"
The blonde swordsman's eyes gradually cleared, and the aura around him grew stronger—the final brilliant slash of light from the Saint was so exquisitely perfect. His use of energy and perception of the world had reached an extreme. After witnessing all this, the bottleneck that had long hindered Brandon's breakthrough immediately loosened.
And so, right here, he broke through to the Ultimate Essence of Technique!