Chapter 21: Fuel and Drill
A super individual.
At the center of the battlefield, having retracted his sword and axe, Joshua gazed at the colossal entity before him and the faint, semi-transparent gravity shield shimmering around it. A torrent of information, like a waterfall, flashed in his eyes.
Length: five thousand six hundred and thirty meters. Three times the size of a standard main fleet vessel of the Central Court, twice the size of the Central Court’s flagship, *Vanguard*. Without considering any transcendent abilities or psionic power, simply crashing down would devastate the surface environment of an entire province. If it moved faster, it could destroy a continent.
Its strength was immense… but in terms of realm alone, it seemed to be merely at the Ultimate level. Joshua withdrew his gaze, having already analyzed most of the creature’s data through the energy fluctuations, spatial distortion, and gravitational changes around it. Clearly, this colossal super individual possessed an energy source unmatched even by ordinary warships, and its sturdy gravity shield could even block Joshua’s Steel Sword. However, this did not mean its strength had reached the Legendary realm. On the contrary, this super individual had not sublimated its life essence; it was simply purely ‘large’.
In terms of realm, or rather, the rank of life level, it was at most at the Ultimate level.
It seemed somewhat unbelievable, but it was indeed the case. Just as the largest creature on land is the roughly forty-ton seismic lizard, while in the sea, it’s the blue whale averaging over one hundred seventy tons, the weakest Void Behemoths, which call the multiverse their home, are colossal beings comparable to small planes—different ecological environments determine the size of species. If these monsters were on the Mycroft Continent, they would at most be the size of local Silver, Gold, and Ultimate-rank magical beasts. But in the Starry World, they could mutate into such terrifying forms, and the endless resources of the starry sky gave them numbers in the millions.
“That being said, given the usually strict hierarchy of the Evil God’s minions, the so-called Void Mother Beast should be at the Legendary rank.”
For a moment, Joshua didn’t even pay attention to the super monster individual right in front of him, which seemed to be brewing something, intending to attack. His gaze passed over the endless horde of monsters, looking towards a distant starry sky several light-seconds away. There, a massive, slowly rotating deep green psionic vortex was embedded in the cosmos like a cold, emotionless eye. And beyond this psionic vortex, a Void Mother Beast, nearly a million meters in length, was staring at the world on the other side of space-time with a gaze full of ruthlessness, coldness, and overflowing malice.
Legendary—could it possess such power? A body nearly a million meters long, seemingly capable of continuous growth—if it kept proliferating unchecked, would it evolve from an asteroid level to a satellite, then to a planet, a gas giant? And then… a star? If it were truly possible, then what was the difference between a Legendary and a deity?
Joshua couldn’t help but recall the words the God of Might and Justice, Xing Zheng, had vaguely revealed while watching the Path of Light in the void.
—Do not become us.
Us. Them. The Seven Gods. Deities. Simple logical threads, almost a clear hint. The meaning of this God of Might was simple: He did not wish for Joshua to become some kind of deity, but to continue along the Legendary path, along that Path of Light, the path the Sage had once walked. The God of Love and Decay, the Father of Nature, and many other ancient deities held the same attitude. They had all proven with their lives and actions that being a deity was a noble but bound path, a power with shackles, not the path of transcendence for the free.
The Legendary path has no end. Understanding this, the warrior slowly nodded. He closed his eyes thoughtfully, seemingly lost in contemplation.
—Indeed, knowing the endless possibilities ahead is the most exhilarating.
“Be careful, Master!” “Incoming attack!”
Ying and Lin’s sudden warnings echoed deep within the spiritual sea, but Joshua didn’t pay them much mind. Although he was distracted on the battlefield, pondering more profound issues, he still had a sliver of attention reserved for dealing with the enemy’s attacks. Facing the massive psionic energy sphere hurtling towards him, whose energy fluctuations alone exceeded three hundred meters, the warrior slightly came to his senses and opened his eyes.
*Crack.*
Accompanied by the sound of metal grinding, the steel giant standing on the corpse of the void monster finally made a special move. He no longer kept his arms crossed over his chest but stretched all four arms out simultaneously. In that instant, a rotating steel ring appeared behind Joshua. Then, he raised his right arm, extended it, slightly spread his five fingers, and an invisible crimson radiance mixed with silver Steel Force formed a concave semi-transparent shield about two kilometers long, blocking in front of him.
The next instant, the massive light sphere slammed into this concave shield. Like high-speed water hitting a smooth bowl, or invisible light shining into a finely crafted concave mirror, it was reflected back without any delay. Then, a continuous stream of light spheres came in rapid succession, and all Joshua had to do was slightly move his arm, letting the concave mirror shield reflect all their attacks back.
With just a little use of intelligence, these pure energy attacks were nothing.
*Boom!* The reflected light sphere crashed directly into the super monster individual, causing a massive explosion. Deep green flesh mixed with fluorescent psionic light particles scattered through the cosmos, forming gaseous clouds several kilometers long. But for this super monster, which was over five kilometers in total length, this was merely the level of having a chunk of flesh bitten off. Though painful, it was far from death. And precisely because it felt unprecedented pain since its birth, this super individual, clearly the commander of the monster horde, immediately emitted invisible psionic waves, transmitting orders to the somewhat chaotic mass of monsters disrupted by the Third Fleet’s relentless bombardment.
Collectively eliminate the ultra-high-risk individual!
With the transmission of the psionic waves, all the monsters—including those that had previously flown towards Nostradamus’s jump channel—completely changed direction, reorganized their formation, and then, in perfect unison, began charging towards Joshua alongside their commander with an unstoppable momentum!
“Don’t hold the formation! We attack too, support our allies!”
Seeing the monster horde’s unusual movement, the commander of the Third Fleet immediately issued orders with a roar full of vigor, completely different from before. The entire fleet of over four hundred fifty main vessels immediately spared no expense, even overloading their psionic engines, to unleash a relentless barrage on the monster horde. They abandoned any formation for self-preservation or defense. All the dual-mounted and triple-mounted light lance emitters on every ship continuously gathered energy, condensing psionic power into solid form and blasting it out.
Unfortunately, although psionic light lances were powerful, they were only effective against scout-class and main force-class void monsters. They could quickly kill monsters ranging from ten to several hundred meters in size, but they couldn’t kill large individuals over a kilometer in size. Moreover, to block the fleet’s attack, a super individual specifically positioned itself in the fleet’s direction, using its incredibly thick gravity shield to block the vast majority of the light lance barrages.
A full fleet salvo could indeed penetrate the super individual’s gravity shield, but it couldn’t inflict a fatal wound. The entire Third Fleet could even see hundreds of meters of its surface flesh turning to ash under millions of degrees of heat, only to regenerate almost instantly the next second, seemingly ignoring the conservation of energy. Their attacks, at most, killed a few thousand ordinary monsters outside the super individual’s protection, doing nothing to change the situation.
Meanwhile, Joshua, facing the charge of millions of monsters, did nothing.
No, it wasn’t nothing—accompanied by an increasingly intense radiance, all creatures still capable of observing this direction could see that the vortex on the warrior’s chest was releasing a continuous, dazzling light.
The Fusion Core Heart furnace was the most important transcendent organ of the warrior’s steel body. Its importance surpassed the super-dense degenerate matter shell and bones shaped by Steel Force; it was an indispensable existence. This heart, burning like a sun, provided Joshua with nearly limitless energy. If he lost it, this nearly indestructible body would lose all its power, becoming a lifeless statue. Earlier, after consecutive jumps directly from the Central Court’s home star to the Flower Garden colony several light-years away in this distant star system, the furnace had nearly gone out. But now, it was fully recharged.
Incredible? Not really. Everything has a reason. Both the previous urgent energy depletion and the sudden full energy now had their causes. This seemingly unbelievable scene was simply because Joshua had suddenly figured out a key point, and thus, everything was different.
“After abandoning the Azure Orb, I no longer had the ability to convert chaos monsters into stamina. So I designed the Fusion Core Heart furnace to replace it, using it as an eternal power core for battle.”
Standing atop the corpse of the giant monster, Joshua spread his four arms. Golden patterns, like integrated circuits, appeared on his silver shell. They originated from the warrior’s heart and then spread throughout his body. This scorching golden light replaced the original cold silver, turning the steel giant into a humanoid sun, releasing enough heat to melt everything. “But the Fusion Core Heart has its limits—it burns my own mass. So the longer a protracted battle or war of attrition, the more disadvantaged I am, completely opposite to before.”
“That won’t do. It’s completely contrary to my original design concept. So I changed my mind.”
Powerful energy fluctuations, mixed with astonishing gravitational changes, caused the giant monster corpse beneath the warrior’s feet to shatter piece by piece. Then, under the irradiation of tens of thousands of degrees of light, it turned into large swaths of light green dust and metal vapor. Initially, these material remnants of the void monster tried to scatter, becoming a few insignificant thin particles in the vacuum of space. But under a powerful attractive force, they all turned into a stream of light, converging into the vortex on Joshua’s chest, which had gradually turned from gold to white.
Why be constrained by the source of fuel? Everything can be fuel for the furnace—the souls of monsters, their flesh, all of it—
With a noticeable shift and distortion in space, immediately, within a radius of several thousand kilometers, all the corpses and debris clouds left behind by the charging scout-class and main force-class void monsters turned into thousands of majestic material streams under the powerful mass fluctuation wave. They then all converged into the warrior’s body, providing unprecedented energy for the already overloaded, spinning, and burning Fusion Core Heart!
Soulflame King, Chaos as Fuel!
“You are all my fuel.”
The massive steel giant stood in the void. He raised his head, his eyes flashing with a light that had burned to incandescent white. The next moment, he shot straight up, turning into a golden star, charging back towards the menacing void monster horde that pressed down like a collapsing star!
The torrent of millions of monsters formed a huge cone in space. With the most powerful super individuals as the core, the entire monster horde uniformly pressed towards Joshua at nearly three-thousandths of the speed of light. This was an attack capable of destroying the entire Central Court colonial star sub-fleet, a trump card never used against the colonial fleet before. In the instinct-driven minds of these monsters, the threat of the steel giant before them had surpassed a fully armed fleet; he was an existence capable of fundamentally damaging the monster horde!
The charge of the massive monster horde was like the sky collapsing and the earth sinking. The enormous mass fluctuation, amplified by psionic power, severely interfered with space-time. Nearly visible semi-transparent spatial ripples tore all matter between them into the finest dust clouds. Similarly, due to this terrifying gravitational fluctuation, they also sealed off all possibilities of space-time jumps in the surrounding area, depriving the approaching Nostradamus and the accelerating Third Fleet of any chance to provide support.
The next scene was the massive black cone of the monster horde crashing head-on into Joshua, who had turned into a golden star.
But how could Joshua retreat? He had faced direct hits from gamma-ray cannons, experienced the meteor shower of the Calamity Evil God. The charge of a million monsters was merely a noteworthy challenge.
No need to dodge. A greatsword and a giant axe appeared in the steel giant’s hands. He began to spin, like a spiral. The moment before Joshua was about to collide with the monster horde, he transformed into a golden drill. At that instant, millions of degrees of heat, tens of thousands of rotations per second, mass fluctuations that stirred the waves of space-time, and the indestructible steel shell merged into one. He completely unleashed his full power. The very tip of this drill showed signs of space-time shattering. The crimson psionic light illuminated half the starry sky, standing in stark opposition to the monster horde across from him.
And the next moment, the massive monster horde and the steel giant, now transformed into a drill, collided without any embellishment.
Time seemed to stand still.
The next instant, a light like a supernova erupted at the edge of the Distant Light star system.