Chapter 2: The Promise
“This is exactly what I hate.”
Looking at the already unconscious Kiraiya, Joshua rubbed his chin, thinking helplessly: “This pressure needs to be dealt with soon, otherwise I can’t even conduct a proper interrogation.”
At his current level of strength, as long as he harbored even the slightest hostility toward someone in his heart, the surrounding elemental forces—even the air itself—would spontaneously press down on them, as if the entire world was resisting them. Kiraiya’s sudden loss of composure earlier wasn’t so much a recollection of the terror of the darkness among the stars, but rather the cumulative effect of multiple factors: elemental sealing, drowning suffocation, dark hallucinations, lonely fear, crushing pressure, resentful phantoms, death omens… So many negative states converging and erupting at once that even a Gold-rank expert collapsed so cleanly into shock.
“I wonder when she’ll wake up.” Joshua hesitated for a moment, but he was genuinely curious about the darkness she had mentioned. After all, anything worthy of that title was at least close to an Evil God, if not one outright. Moreover, when he had returned from the Grandia World back then, Pope Eagle had more or less hinted that behind the Five-Colored Dragon Clan and the Abyss Demons, there was an even deeper shadow. So, after a brief pause, the warrior made up his mind: “Fine, I might as well test out the new skill I developed.”
Thinking this, he extended his right hand, aiming it at the unconscious Elder Kiraiya on the ground. A flowing, unceasing silver light flickered in Joshua’s palm, and the elder’s body seemed to be drawn by some gravitational force, slowly floating up until her forehead pressed against the warrior’s palm. At that very moment, the carefully tuned Steel Force surged into her brain, making contact with her soul.
**【Root Connection】**
Steel Force was the power that constructed all things, capable of simultaneously touching both matter and soul while carrying vast amounts of information. If a person’s complete information could be recorded using a spiral genetic chain, then Steel Force was an even more efficient carrier. Through Steel Force, Joshua could now ignore differences in language and life essence, communicating directly with any existence—even if the other party had sealed their soul. A coma was no exception. This was a one-sided, forced will-link with no method of exemption other than direct energy resistance.
Since he didn’t want to wait for Kiraiya to wake up, and wasn’t sure if she would faint again upon mentioning that darkness, Joshua used this newly comprehended skill. Although it sounded a bit demonic, he swore that he had originally developed it solely to better explore the essence of Steel Force. After all, his current assimilation rate hadn’t even exceeded twenty percent. Who knew it would end up creating this optimized version of soul interrogation? Granted, aside from not turning the target into an idiot, it was essentially soul-searching.
Sifting through a person’s memories was not pleasant, especially when what you wanted was hidden deep within their soul. Joshua skipped over all of Kiraiya’s private and personal memories, directly breaking through her fragile soul defenses. Using keyword indexing, he found everything related to **【Abyss Demon】**【Five-Colored Dragon Clan】【Darkness of the Stars】**. After copying this information, he cleanly withdrew from Kiraiya’s soul space, standing alone on the spot as he read through these recollections.
Kiraiya hadn’t lied to Joshua. Regarding the Abyss Demons and the Five-Colored Dragon Clan, the Earth Temple faction had indeed always maintained an ambiguous attitude. Most matters were handled by the radical faction; they had only contributed to the replication of the Ashen Earth Divine Sword—something the elder hadn’t dared to confess to Joshua, but he knew now.
As he read through the information about the Darkness of the Stars, Joshua’s expression immediately turned serious. He first confirmed the integrity of the information, then muttered in surprise: “It’s been gouged out?”
All of Kiraiya’s memories related to the Darkness of the Stars were missing a very obvious piece—its image. In these recollections, Joshua could only sense a deep, dark abyss. The only things left were parts of conversations between the temple’s High Priest, the elder, and that entity, along with some related information. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t see its form. It felt like a puzzle missing a crucial piece, making one wonder whether this was intentional or if its form was simply that bottomless darkness.
Since Kiraiya hadn’t encountered the Darkness of the Stars many times, this part of the information wasn’t long. But after fully understanding it, Joshua still frowned seriously, deep in thought.
“It’s not an Evil God, nor their minions.”
Although the image was gouged out, judging from the conversations between the Earth Temple’s High Priest and Kiraiya herself, the entity was at least an orderly life form capable of communication—fundamentally different from the completely chaotic Evil Gods driven solely by destruction. Joshua also didn’t sense the familiar chaotic aura. And that was precisely the most serious part: precisely because it was an orderly life form, it was terrifying.
“They first contacted the Five-Colored Dragon Clan, supporting their bid to seize the status of the dominant race in the Mycroft World. Next were the Abyss Demons, backing their plunder of this ancient world’s resources and souls. Finally, they seduced the Earth Temple, offering one possible method of salvation after another, step by step leading them all into the depths of darkness, until they degenerated into madmen advocating for merging with the Abyss.”
“On the surface, it even seemed like they were helping the Earth Temple save the world, but in reality, they were systematically weakening Mycroft Continent’s ability to defend itself. Whether it was the Mad Dragon, the cults, or the Abyss invasion, their shadow was behind it all!”
Thinking this, Joshua couldn’t help but recall what the God of Might had said to him back then.
The greatest enemy of order was not the Abyss, nor chaos, but another order. Although he still didn’t know why they were so intent on weakening the Mycroft World, there was no doubt they harbored malice. An orderly civilization that knew how to scheme and lurk in the shadows was far more terrifying than the Abyss and Evil Gods that invaded with brute force.
“Ding-a-ling!”
Suddenly, just as Joshua was pondering, accompanied by the crisp sound of wind chimes, he sensed a moderately strong energy reaction rapidly flying through the air toward the tower. He even vaguely heard the panicked shouts of the Black Dragon girl wandering nearby. Then, a swirling, gentle orb of light descended from midair to Joshua’s side, spinning rapidly around the unconscious Kiraiya.
“What’s wrong, Xiao Guang?” Temporarily interrupting his thoughts, Joshua bent down somewhat puzzled, grabbed the rapidly spinning light orb, held it up before his eyes, and frowned: “Didn’t I say I have important business today? Don’t come bother me—go play with Hei. She’s worried about you.”
“Ding-a-ling… Familiar… familiar…”
But the firmly grasped, immobile light spoke in a somewhat unwilling tone, repeating a simple phrase: “Just now… there was a familiar aura… very sad…”
“Familiar aura? Sad?” Joshua was stunned for a moment. Then, as if suddenly recalling something, a guess and a chill arose in his heart. He first took a deep look at Kiraiya, who was gradually starting to regain consciousness, then took a breath, re-releasing the partial aura of the Darkness of the Stars that he had inadvertently leaked while reading the memories. His voice low, the warrior asked: “Is it this?”
“Ding-a-ling-ling——”
The moment Joshua released the partial aura of the Darkness of the Stars, the light orb—which had always been approachable, never getting angry even when batted around like a ball by Number 3 and Hei, only chiming and laughing—suddenly erupted with immense energy. Blinding light, like the sun, accompanied by the most extreme positive energy, instantly enveloped an area hundreds of meters in radius. Within this range, all objects were thoroughly purified. The lingering cold aura that had persisted for years due to the northern location was also completely dissolved. Vaguely, at the very core of the light, a vision could be seen—a crimson blood moon shining with equally bright radiance in a distant world. The massive light-lifeform deep within the star core was startled, roaring as it awakened from slumber. Overwhelmingly powerful energy tides engulfed several floating islands, illuminating the entire world.
This light appeared for only an instant before Joshua immediately extinguished it. The warrior even followed the connection between the light orb and its mother entity, communicating with the light-lifeform in the distant Bloodmoon Abyss, forcibly ‘calming’ it back to sleep.
Kiraiya, who had been on the verge of waking, was immediately knocked unconscious again by the overly dazzling and powerful positive energy, let alone the small amount of simulated Darkness of the Stars aura Joshua had released earlier. After the eruption, the somewhat bewildered light orb’s overall glow dimmed. It let out an unwilling sound: “Ding… this feeling… so sad…”
“…Alright, go play. Don’t think too much.”
After a moment of silence, Joshua looked at the listless light orb, whose body had even shrunk a bit, and said seriously: “Leave everything to me.”
Hearing Joshua’s words, the somewhat confused light orb obediently floated up again, wobbling toward the direction where Hei was. Joshua watched it until the light orb once again settled on top of Hei’s head, who had already found her way nearby, before withdrawing his gaze. The warrior’s crimson eyes flickered with an unsteady silver light. Steel Force churned within his body, stirred by his unsettled thoughts and terrifying guesses.
“The predecessor of the Bloodmoon Abyss, the Sky Island World of Hilaya, was destroyed by the contraction of their energy sun. Even the final ‘Ring World’ plan couldn’t save their race. The Void Warship, representing their only hope, returned—not with hope, but with the root of destruction.”
Silently recalling the world’s memories he had seen in the Bloodmoon Abyss, Joshua pieced together most of the available information and deduced a terrifying truth: the destruction of the Hilaya World might not have been the work of an Evil God, but the scheming of another orderly civilization.
Back then, the Hilaya Void Warship had returned from exploring the multiverse, claiming they had encountered a benevolent great existence in the void. That great existence had taught them a method to save their world: to unify all things, to restart, or to recreate the world. This suggestion wasn’t entirely wrong, as civilizations took many forms. Perhaps that great existence itself was a unified collective will civilization—like a hive mind or a machine network aggregate? The Hilaya civilization, blindly copying it, naturally perished due to incompatibility. It was only because the outcome was so tragic that Joshua had inferred it was an Evil God’s scheme.
But thinking about it now, what Evil God had the brains to conceive such a scheme? They might ambush, lurk, or wait thousands of years for an opportunity, but they could never devise such a plan. Only another orderly civilization could. And perhaps the Hilaya World, precisely because the entity was an orderly civilization, trusted it without suspicion, truly believing it was benevolent—only to end up with everyone transformed into energy aggregates.
“The Evil God’s goal is to destroy worlds… but the situation in the Bloodmoon Abyss looks more like harvesting on a world-scale…”
Pacing back and forth in the tower a few times, Joshua frowned and made up his mind: “Pope Eagle should know some of this too, but he doesn’t know the true situation of the Bloodmoon Abyss, nor the experiences of the Hilaya World, so he couldn’t reach this conclusion… This shouldn’t be hidden. It needs to be communicated to all Legendary experts and the upper echelons of major powers.”
Although there were conflicts among Legendary experts—for instance, the Metal Dragons and Gem Dragons, somewhat marginalized due to the Five-Colored Dragon Clan’s rebellion, or the extremely poor relations between the Fishmen and the Eastern Plains nations. In the past, the Far South Kingdom hadn’t gotten along well with the neighboring Elves and the Commercial Federation either. But these were just boring disputes born of interests within this world. Faced with a true world-level threat, all Legendary experts would understand the stakes.
“Soon, it will be time to explore the Void Distortion Point, the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground. At that time, at least five major powers will jointly dispatch personnel to explore. That means at least five Legendary experts will be present to oversee, or even enter personally.”
Without a doubt, that would be the best opportunity for communication. By personally demonstrating the aura of the Darkness of the Stars and sharing some intelligence about the Bloodmoon Abyss, everyone would surely understand the terror of this entity lurking in the shadows, watching the Mycroft World.
Of course, aside from the greater good of the world, Joshua had a very personal reason to oppose it.
“Very sad, huh.”
Thinking of the low emotions the suddenly erupting light had revealed, and the furious yet sorrowful outburst of the usually simple and gentle light-lifeform in the Bloodmoon Abyss, Joshua narrowed his eyes and looked up at the void beyond the sky. He had already said it—he would handle everything.
And so he would.
That was the warrior’s promise.