Chapter 29: By Any Means Necessary
In the black cosmos, the white light that blazed like a nova gradually receded, and the pervasive gray dust dissipated with the shockwave. And behind the fading haze of dust, the Void Mother Beast's colossal body writhed like a convulsing mollusk, its flesh squirming as it gnawed at the meteorite that had nearly snapped it in two. This scene was like a nightmare monster stepping into reality—thousands upon thousands of swollen tumors, each the size of a building, were covered in sharp, blade-like teeth. They scraped and churned like chainsaws, and in mere seconds, the once-indestructible meteorite was ground down by the beast's limbs, absorbed as nutrients into its body.
At that moment, the Void Mother Beast recklessly displayed the grotesque features associated with the Plague Evil God. Countless compound eyes, carapaces, and tumors briefly appeared as it writhed, only to be smoothly covered again by a flowing black carapace, returning to its spindle-like shape.
Having just unleashed a high-energy ray that, if sustained, could destroy a planet's surface, the Mother Beast appeared exhausted. After devouring the meteorite, it made no further moves. After all, unleashing such a trump card would strain even the power of an Evil God's highest-ranking minion. Regardless, that was a supreme disintegration ray more powerful than legendary magic, a spear of annihilation that only existed in the theory of psionic civilizations, and the prototype of a planet-destroying superweapon spoken of by most civilizations.
Of course, the Void Mother Beast's power was far from that level, but it did possess the potential to destroy planets. Given time, it would one day become a colossal entity capable of standing alone against an entire galactic civilization, feeding on stars. Even the ancient empire would have to kneel and flee before it.
"...As expected of a legendary monster that grew up in the void of space. I underestimated you."
Standing far opposite the Mother Beast, Joshua had now calmed down. Although Nostradamus seemed to have been vaporized by the high-energy ray earlier, that was just an illusion. The warrior still had a mental link with the old mage, and he knew that the latter was indeed severely injured, his body disrupted by the high-energy impact and nearly on the verge of self-annihilation. But without a doubt, he was still alive, just temporarily unable to assist and forced to stay at the edge of the battlefield, slowly recovering his strength.
"A moment of carelessness... Joshua, I can't coordinate with you for now." A weak voice came through the mental link. The severely injured old mage's will was calm, without resentment or regret. He simply said softly, "The energy stored in its body exceeds my imagination. It could unleash such a disintegration spell without charging. Let me rest for a while; I'll help you later."
"That's more than enough." Joshua replied equally calmly. He narrowed his eyes slightly, looking at the distant enemy. "Master Nostradamus, please rest first."
The warrior was already very grateful. This was originally his task alone. Nostradamus had solved many thorny problems that would have been difficult for one person to handle—like the endless void monsters, like the incredibly thick psionic gravity shield. The old mage had already resolved all the problems that a warrior would find hard to deal with. So.
The next part, I'll handle myself.
On the opposite side of Joshua, on the asteroid belt orbit hundreds of kilometers away, the spindle-shaped Mother Beast, which had devoured the meteorite, began to show violent changes again. As cracks opened in its hundred-meter-thick chitinous carapace, layers of psionic crystal veins emerged like red stripes on the black body of the Void Mother Beast. The Evil God's minion let out a pained yet ecstatic howl in the void. Having obtained a large amount of precious minerals from the asteroid, it now had the resources to reconstruct its psionic shield. This was the first step in rebuilding its defense system. Deep green psionic light mixed with deep red crystal colors, forming a dirty and chaotic hazy glow that illuminated the surrounding starfield.
Watching this, Joshua, standing in the asteroid belt of the Distant Light Star System, took a step forward. The four-armed giant, which had stood motionless like a steel statue, shed a layer of decayed iron shavings. This was due to the intense battle and energy transmission causing rapid aging of its body. Blocks of gray rust debris, dozens of meters in size, fell from the four-hundred-meter-tall giant, turning into dust. And where they had been, a smooth, solid new shell reflected the light of the distant star, making the cold metallic gleam flicker in the starry void.
The red-and-green mixed psionic radiance and the cold metallic light seemed to split the universe into two poles. Two powerful energies surged in the shadows, their clashing phenomena overshadowing the light of the stars.
Just as the distant Void Mother Beast could recover its injuries by absorbing minerals from the surrounding asteroid belt, Joshua could also rapidly self-repair by absorbing minerals from nearby meteorites. Although this repair had flaws and would require long-term polishing to perfect, it was already good enough for wartime. One couldn't ask for too much.
The next moment, as a golden light blazed in the void, the Void Mother Beast, which had been howling in ecstasy, immediately let out a pained roar that made the surrounding asteroids tremble—
Because Joshua, charging at full speed, had turned himself into an unparalleled meteorite, slamming heavily into its outer carapace!
Instantly, a web of cracks spanning thousands of meters appeared on the massive, smooth black carapace. Thousands of tons of the monster's green bodily fluids, under immense pressure, sprayed out like jets of mist in all directions!
Legend said that a dragon's roar could shake mountains, reverse waves, and tremble the atmosphere. But the sound the Void Mother Beast made from pain was a high-frequency wave far beyond a dragon's roar. As the blood mist that served as a transmission medium swirled, nearby asteroids close to the Mother Beast exploded in resonance, turning into countless fragments. The immense psionic energy contained in the Evil God's minion's bodily fluids was also triggered, turning into leaping energy lightning. But all this power, enough to make a fleet tremble, was nothing compared to the giant standing atop the beast's body!
At the center of the web-like cracked carapace, Joshua, surrounded by rings of golden-red light, raised his right hand expressionlessly. The silver greatsword was gripped in his hand. Before it even swung down, a wild wind had already swept through the blood mist, turning into a violent tornado ravaging the surroundings. This was because layers of deep red light swirled at the blade's edge, like the rapidly spinning teeth of a chainsword, providing it with the power to tear through anything. The massive mass shift around the rapidly spinning Steel Force at the blade created an unparalleled gravitational vortex, distorting and trembling space itself.
Steel Sword, Chainsaw Mode.
In the vacuum, the vortex silently slammed down heavily, like a silver lightning bolt striking the beast's surface. In one breath, a huge bloody hole appeared on the monster's body. Deep green blood mist erupted like a fountain, then turned into a tornado thousands of meters high due to the gravitational vortex of the chainsword. Because of this, the web-like cracks on the beast's surface, which were still spreading, instantly expanded further. Joshua's violent power, like the most brutal scythe, plowed through the monster's flesh, completely shattering the carapace on its surface into twisted chitinous debris.
But that was as far as it went. The pained Mother Beast quickly retaliated against the tiny creature that had suddenly appeared on its surface. For a lifeform over ninety kilometers long, a four-hundred-meter-tall steel giant was indeed just an ant. The damage it caused, though seemingly terrifying, was to the Mother Beast like breaking a pinky finger—painful but not fatal, far weaker than the earlier meteorite impact.
Thus, in the next blink, thousands of pink, fleshy tentacles burst from the bottom of the carapace that Joshua had shattered. In just one-fifth of a second, these tentacles were covered by a rapidly hardening black keratin layer, their sharp tips gleaming like blades. Then, with a thunderous impact, they lashed out at the steel giant, who was still relentlessly attacking the beast's surface.
A whip swung by human force could have its tip exceed the speed of sound. For a monster of the Void Mother Beast's size, how fast could the tips of its thousands-of-meters-long tentacles be? How heavy would their strikes be? No one knew. The Mother Beast didn't care about these black tentacles, letting them swiftly cut through the green mist formed by its own blood, creating blade-like shockwaves and deafening sounds.
Sensing the enemy's approach, Joshua didn't stop his attack. One of his four right hands was swinging the silver greatsword, continuously tearing through the beast's flesh. In the few seconds it took for the enemy to prepare its counterattack, he had already ripped open a flesh channel hundreds of meters deep, completely piercing the enemy's carapace. But before he could delve deeper into the channel, the Mother Beast's attack arrived with the force of thunder.
Without turning back, Joshua's other three arms twisted direction, conjuring thousands of fist shadows to block the strikes one by one. The metal fists collided with the tough keratin tentacles, easily shattering them, sending up bursts of black carapace debris. But this victory didn't affect the outcome. Because he still had to focus on attacking the Mother Beast's main body, the warrior was ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer number of tentacles and was hit.
Bang! A dull impact sounded. Unlike the earlier giant, soft tentacles, the Mother Beast had learned from experience. These tentacles were extremely hard. Even though they shattered upon impact with Joshua's steel body from the recoil, they still transferred the full force of the impact onto him. The warrior was immediately sent flying like a baseball hit by a bat, turning into a silver streak hurtling into the distance.
But Joshua wasn't sent far—because his body was too heavy, he was knocked away along a trajectory close to the Mother Beast's carapace. The moment he was sent flying, the warrior silently swung his greatsword, unhesitatingly plunging it into the beast's carapace, using his own strength to forcibly cancel the impact.
But even with such a quick reaction, his greatsword carved a nearly five-kilometer-long gash in the beast's body before he stopped. Through the crack, one could see the beast's constantly churning flesh and internal organs, along with countless densely packed tumors wrapped in pus and blood blisters, their purpose unknown.
Seeing that a single hit was useless, the Mother Beast's surface sprouted countless tentacles again, mixed with thousands of sharp bone spikes. These bone spikes, degenerated from tentacles, were like tracking magic missiles from the Mycroft Continent, automatically locking onto the warrior's energy fluctuations. Each one carried the kinetic force of a Rod of God striking the surface from outer space. But these physical, tangible attacks were useless against a prepared Joshua.
The warrior simply looked up, swept his gaze over the swarm of tentacles and bone spikes, then raised his greatsword and slashed horizontally from left to right in the void. A violent gravity wave spread, and the countless tentacles and bone spikes exploded in mid-air, turning into a sky full of shattered debris and blood mist. The next instant, a huge hole burst open in the center of the blood mist—Joshua, flying at extreme speed, had torn through the mist. In one second, he returned to the wound he had previously cut into the Mother Beast.
Boom! With a thunderous roar, the warrior landed again on the beast's carapace. The web-like giant wounds and carapace cracks were regenerating as the beast's internal flesh writhed, but due to the short time, the wound hadn't healed much. Joshua took a deep breath and continued his previous work, rapidly swinging his sword to cut deeper into the beast's wound. But unlike before, golden liquid flowed from cracks on his body that looked like ceramic fractures, dripping onto the monster's body.
The Mother Beast's attacks had indeed damaged Joshua, just not obviously.
The outer shell of the steel giant was not entirely composed of Steel Force forming ultra-dense degenerate matter. Especially when Joshua was attacking, his defense would be greatly reduced as Steel Force was diverted. But even so, the giant's body was made of an unknown superalloy without any metallic defects, and it wouldn't shatter from simple impacts. However, his original body was a perfect alloy, but the newly regenerated parts were not. It was at the connections between these two that depressions or protrusions, like cracks, appeared.
As Joshua swung his sword madly, several-kilometer-long massive tornadoes rose from the Void Mother Beast's surface. At the same time, golden-red blood flowed from the cracks in his shattered shell, dripping onto the beast's carapace and into its internal flesh. But strangely, this golden-red 'blood' wasn't vaporized by the high temperature released from the furnace in the warrior's chest. Instead, like boiling molten steel, it continued to burn on the countless twisted tumors and flesh, making a sizzling sound, melting them layer by layer, revealing the black-green psionic nerve networks underneath. Those psionic-releasing, crystallized nerve aggregates could resist the burning of the warrior's blood, making Joshua look sideways with a thoughtful expression.
The next instant, the Void Mother Beast attacked again—this time, it wasn't just simple tentacles and bone spikes, but countless psionic light spears and orbs. With the regeneration of the psionic crystal veins on its surface, the Evil God's minion could now use these energy attacks. These massive light orbs, several kilometers in size, were controlled by the Void Mother Beast, raining down like suicide bombers on the area where Joshua was.
The Void Mother Beast would rather harm itself, severely wound its own flesh, to completely annihilate Joshua!
Without any hesitation, upon seeing the giant psionic light orbs, each bigger than the Great Aias Mountain, Joshua unhesitatingly dove into the beast's flesh. He liked to fight enemies head-on, but that didn't mean he was a suicidal madman. However, just as the warrior entered the beast's wound, the countless psionic light orbs and spears instantly dissipated like illusions, turning into a galaxy of psionic particles. These particles, as if alive, self-reassembled, finally forming a cross-shaped, incredibly thick psionic shield.
Boom!
The Void Mother Beast controlled this cross-shaped, almost materialized psionic shield, slamming it down like a seal over its own wound, producing a huge vibration. After that, the Mother Beast, which had been writhing all over, immediately stopped its violent movements, hanging motionless in the void like a statue. It withdrew all its attention, focusing entirely on dealing with the enemy now locked inside its body.
Ambushed? Sensing the massive psionic shield sealing him inside the beast's body with no way back, Joshua's mouth twitched slightly, revealing an expression of "I knew it." The Void Mother Beast's thought process was as simple as a beast's. The warrior had long guessed this method of dealing with him. Clearly, to eliminate this uncertain factor, the Mother Beast was willing to pay a huge price to truly destroy him. But it had gotten one thing wrong—it had vastly underestimated the damage he could cause.
Never underestimate a legendary. Even if his size was only a few hundredths of the enemy's.
With a loud laugh, in an instant, nuclear fusion sparks igniting under his feet, Joshua shot into the Void Mother Beast's body like a red-hot needle. In just a few seconds, he pierced through thousands of meters of flesh barriers, breaking through the beast's outer chitinous shell, keratin steel skin, writhing tumor layer, and void monster reproductive cavity, directly reaching the true interior of this flesh planet—the truly vulnerable internal organs!
Pfft! Breaking through the last layer of tough, semi-transparent cartilage septum on the beast's surface, Joshua felt as if he had plunged into water. He looked around and found himself in a massive chamber composed of countless deep green, soft flesh.
But arriving here didn't mean the enemy had no defenses. In fact, Joshua knew that when facing such a giant creature, entering its vulnerable interior was when the real battle began. And a thousandth of a second after the warrior truly arrived here, the materialized deep green psionic energy surged like a collapsing glacier, pressing down on Joshua like an avalanche.
However, the fierce psionic tide hadn't even touched the warrior's body before it was blocked by a layer of deep red, semi-transparent fluctuation on Joshua's surface. The Mother Beast's psionic energy was like the Mother Tree of the Central Court—vast but loose. Joshua could easily cancel it out with his own energy. But quality wasn't enough; quantity made up for it. As the beast's deep flesh writhed, immeasurable, inexhaustible, almost infinite psionic energy surged like a tide. Like the immune system and muscle tissue in a human body trying to expel a foreign object, it sought to completely crush the warrior. And if it couldn't crush this stubborn foreign body, it would at least expel it to the outer flesh.
The battlefield could be inside the Mother Beast's body, but absolutely not in this deep, core flesh!
The moment the Mother Beast's psionic energy began its rejection reaction, Joshua's surface instantly changed from silver to blazing golden-red. The Fusion Core Heart furnace released immense energy to counter the impacts from all directions. High-temperature gas, at hundreds of thousands or even millions of degrees, sprayed from every part of his surface, burning the enemy's fragile internal chambers, turning countless deep green flesh into charred black ash, completely annihilating all life within the Evil God's minion's body!
The rejection reaction was ultimately rooted in flesh. Since the reacting flesh was burned away, the counterattack naturally dissipated. Even if flesh in other distant parts produced a stress response, the violent psionic counterattack couldn't catch up to Joshua's speed.
But this energy burst couldn't last. Such intense energy confrontation was impossible even for Joshua when he held the Azure Orb. Since there was only one enemy, the Mother Beast, he couldn't gain endless stamina by killing Chaos monsters. But would the warrior dare to delve deep into the Mother Beast's body without preparation?
Of course not.
Boom! While flying at extreme speed, swinging his silver greatsword to destroy the beast's flesh and resisting the surrounding psionic rejection, Joshua's other three fists shot out, grabbing the monster's flesh in three directions, which was pulsing and swelling like a heart. Deep red, high-heat energy erupted from the warrior's arms, burning away most of the beast's biological tissue, revealing the deep green psionic nerve networks underneath. The next moment, like a wild beast, the warrior roughly tore this psionic nerve network from the beast's flesh, pulling out large amounts of bodily fluids and blood.
Rip—Pulululu—!!
The sound of flesh tearing and organs breaking echoed. The steel giant, while attacking the surroundings, madly destroying the Void Mother Beast's internal tissues, and resisting the massive psionic rejection inside the enemy's body, brutally tore through the enemy's flesh. Joshua's expression didn't change. He opened his mouth and bit hard into the crystallized psionic nerve in his hand. With a crisp cracking sound and an obvious swallowing noise, a fierce red light flashed in Joshua's eyes within the deep green psionic sea inside the beast's body. Massive energy came from within the warrior, supplying the steel giant to continue fighting.
Crunch, crunch!
The swallowing speed was too slow to complete the energy supply task quickly. Joshua stuffed the remaining crystallized psionic nerve into the Fusion Core Heart furnace on his chest. The golden vortex spun madly, grinding these high-energy substances, converting them into the energy the warrior urgently needed.
Not bad taste.
With this thought in mind, Joshua's movements were anything but slow. He continuously swung his mass weapon, the Steel Sword, creating one huge cavity after another inside the Void Mother Beast's body, causing the enemy's bodily fluids and blood to spray wildly, filling these cavities with blood clots. For the giant Evil God's minion, the warrior was no longer a harmless ant but a bullet that would continuously advance and destroy inside its body. The Void Mother Beast, which had been stationary on the asteroid belt orbit, immediately began to spin and tremble violently. Feeling immense pain, it moved randomly, flying around the star system like a headless fly. Countless tentacles flailed like possessed villagers, lashing at the fragile asteroids around it.
Meanwhile, inside the Mother Beast's body, the crystallized psionic nerve swallowed by Joshua showed abnormal activity. Even after entering his stomach, which had evolved into something like a matter-disintegrating furnace, it remained active, turning into countless crystal spores that attached to the inner chambers of the warrior's body, spreading and multiplying like a virus. They sought out organic matter, attempting to invade those poor biological cells, seize their nutrients, and turn them into 'themselves,' ultimately taking Joshua's talents and power for their own use—just as they had done on several colonies of the Central Court and the Folbi people.
But this time, these Chaos viruses had truly hit a wall.
Because inside the warrior's body, aside from boiling molten steel and degenerate matter bones, there was absolutely no flesh or blood.
—Nostradamus was severely injured. Good.
Feeling the despair of the Void Mother Beast's viruses and spores as they were ground into pure high-energy matter in his stomach, Joshua continued to resist the psionic impacts from all directions while swallowing the beast's psionic crystal nerves. The warrior's heart was as cold as the deepest glacier at the pole. He thought somewhat coldly: Otherwise, I'd have to waste time explaining my current actions later.
At this moment, Joshua was more like the embodiment of a virus than the Plague Evil God's minion. He had invaded the Void Mother Beast's body. The enemy could resist the assimilation of Steel Force but couldn't refuse physical destruction. If an ordinary virus was just a thief breaking in and stealing all the valuables, then Joshua was a thug taking a sledgehammer and leveling the entire house—this guy would even eat parts of the house!
But Joshua's violent, almost crazy actions undoubtedly made others uneasy.
"Master!" In the warrior's mental space, Ying shouted worriedly, "Calm down! Your mental state is a bit unstable!"
"Detecting divine reaction!" On the other side, Lin also shouted loudly. The black-haired boy, as he had agreed with Joshua earlier, did his best to warn the warrior: "Master, don't be controlled by divinity!"
The originally milky-white light orb, seemingly affected by Joshua's mood, had turned crimson. It wanted to say something but was too nervous to even make a tinkling sound.
"I am calm."
Inside the Void Mother Beast, which was moving at high speed in the Distant Light Star System in pain, trying to find a place to crash to relieve its internal agony, Joshua—who looked more like a monster than any monster—said this. His three arms tore back and forth at the psionic nerve networks inside the beast's body, causing large amounts of blood and tissue fragments to spray, then coldly pulled them down, stuffing them into his mouth or into the Fusion Core Heart furnace on his chest. A demonic red light flickered in the warrior's eyes. But after hearing what Ying and Lin said, his movements involuntarily paused for a moment. Joshua closed his eyes, then opened them. He said softly, "This isn't... some divinity."
The Mother Beast's psionic nerve networks provided immense energy. An unstoppable, colossal force came from Joshua's body. The warrior stretched his four arms and body. Golden-red shockwaves spread wildly around him. The massive repulsive force, mixed with mass shifts, pushed away the surrounding fragile flesh and psionic energy of the Void Mother Beast, forming a vacuum sphere. And in front of Joshua, as he raised his silver greatsword, a long, bloody corridor leading straight to the deepest part of the Void Mother Beast's body was opened amidst flying flesh and internal organs.
Joshua looked coldly ahead at the long, dark, bloody passage: "This is just... doing whatever it takes to win. By any means necessary."
And the next instant, he transformed into a golden streak, rapidly advancing toward the deepest part of the Void Mother Beast's body.