Chapter 34: After Everything Ends
Within Neptune Star, the Void Mother Beast, with its layered compound eyes, 'watched' the blazing sun rapidly descending toward it.
From the simple perspective of a chaotic creature, it was an ultra-high-density sphere of matter, condensed to its limit by an invisible gravitational field, constantly releasing light and heat. It ignited the atmosphere, released arcs of electricity, and poured irresistible heat and shockwaves into its surroundings. The thin clouds of hydrogen and helium gas in the atmosphere were ignited in an instant, then burned away. A crimson light illuminated half of Neptune Star's sky.
Although, compared to the massive star at the center of the distant galaxy, endlessly releasing boundless light and heat, this fireball was small, fragile, and seemed as if it might be extinguished at any moment, the Void Mother Beast knew without a doubt that, in essence, it was the same as the many huge, luminous stars it and its progenitor had encountered before—an existence called a 'star'. Such a fireball had previously exploded within its body, destroying six energy cores, severely damaging its central nervous system, and reducing it to its current state.
And now, another 'star' was falling. As it plummeted at tremendous speed, it drew in the surrounding hydrogen and helium gases like an inverted waterfall, merging them into itself. This scene was as if the entire sky was simultaneously burning and collapsing, like a mythical apocalyptic skyfall.
"Cannot resist."
The Void Mother Beast reached this conclusion because its body was imprisoned by an existence composed of deep blue space-time fissures, unable to dodge. And precisely because of this, the moment the conclusion was reached, it was struck. Accompanied by a rapidly streaking crimson trail, a fireball, at most a few dozen meters in size, collided with the body of a colossal alien lifeform whose length alone exceeded four hundred and fifty kilometers. This scene should have been silent, but a deafening, earth-shattering roar echoed across Neptune Star's surface.
In that instant, the Void Mother Beast felt an unprecedented, powerful impact strike its body. Its massive frame even sank slightly from the force. At the same time, the tens of millions of degrees of heat on the fireball's surface instantly incinerated its psionic shield and outer shell, then sequentially reduced the steel skin, flesh, and internal organs on that side of the Mother Beast to nothingness. The terrifyingly high temperature and impact even destroyed the basic structure composing that matter, completely annihilating the nanoscale artificial viruses, leaving no possibility of regeneration.
Boom!
In just an instant, the fireball, like a red-hot knife through butter, pierced through the Void Mother Beast's body. All material fragments along its path were swept up by an invisible gravitational vortex and merged into the fireball. It reached the center of the Mother Beast's body, where the last two remaining energy cores and the central nervous system were almost instantly shattered by the immense impact and gravitational shift. But this was still not the end. Fragments of the Mother Beast's energy cores and the hydrogen-helium aggregates from Neptune Star were drawn into the fireball, joining the nuclear fusion, sustaining the fireball's burn. The Void Mother Beast felt as if a black hole had formed inside its body, devouring and incinerating its flesh and blood. For a colossal chaotic creature, this was an incredibly painful, prolonged, and vivid process.
Neptune Star was ignited, and so was the Mother Beast's body. From the sky, it was clearly visible: golden-red flames spread from the inside out across the Mother Beast's enormous frame. Countless sword-like rays of light burst forth from the ceramic-crack-like wounds on its black carapace. The Void Mother Beast let out a piercing, agonized howl, a lament powerful enough to shake a continent, carried across the star sea by the gas giant's storms. But no one could hear its voice, because the spreading nuclear flames simultaneously incinerated all the gases capable of transmitting sound waves.
Cells turned to charcoal, lymph dried up completely. The Mother Beast's body began to disintegrate from its very center, like a crumbling biscuit.
Viewed from space, a huge, golden, bowl-shaped energy shield could be seen slowly bulging and appearing on Neptune Star's surface. Inside it, a massive black figure was struggling, then turning to ash inch by inch. This was formed by the energy overflowing from the detonating energy cores within the Void Mother Beast's body. As the energy shield gradually expanded, a larger ring of fire spread like a nova to other parts of Neptune Star, until the temperature at its edge was insufficient to ignite the hydrogen and helium gases.
And at the center where the blazing sun had fallen, inside the Void Mother Beast's body, which had completely turned into a giant torch, the flames continued to burn. The artificial sun thrown by Joshua was continuously drawing in the surrounding hydrogen-helium aggregate gases and the Mother Beast's flesh and blood, merging them into itself, adding to its combustion. Unlike the Blazing Sun Flash Joshua had used before, here on the gas giant Neptune Star, it had an endless supply of fuel, enough to burn the Mother Beast to ashes. Without any accidents, it could even continue burning until the flames swept across the entire giant star. At that point, Neptune Star might have to be renamed Fire Star or Blaze Star.
But a suddenly appearing black space put an end to this possibility.
The moment the Void Mother Beast's central nervous system and energy cores were completely destroyed by the Blazing Sun Flash, Joshua, along with the disengaged Nostradamus, resisted Neptune Star's gravity, moving away from the explosion center and flying towards the Midgardian fleet. But after a wave of eerie energy fluctuations, which made one feel a bone-chilling cold, swept across the starry sky, they immediately turned back with alertness.
Then, the warrior and the old mage saw a black space in the midst of the golden sea of fire.
"It's that black space at the center of the Void Mother Beast's body!" Joshua recognized the nature of that black space almost instantly, but he was extremely puzzled: the Mother Beast's energy cores had been detonated by his attack, so why was this thing still there? But before the warrior could figure this out, the suddenly appearing black space rapidly dissipated in the high temperature of the nuclear fusion. Yet, at the same time, a cold and vast energy, seemingly from the other end of the void, surged out from this space. The overflowing energy extinguished the prairie-fire seed Joshua had thrown, then, as if it had consumed all its energy, it suddenly dissipated again, just as abruptly as it had appeared.
"What exactly is that?!"
The golden-red light on Neptune Star's surface reflected on the face of Nostradamus, who had returned to human form. The Archmage, standing at the gravitational equilibrium point, had a very serious expression. He said in a deep voice: "Vast, cold, eerie... I sensed a devouring desire for everything, an extremely ominous will."
"...It is the power of the Plague Evil God."
Closing his eyes and earnestly sensing the residual traces of that power, Joshua, also back in human form, could not hide his exhaustion on his face. After a while, he opened his eyes again and said with a frown: "I understand... Just like the Evil God's Minions on the Mycroft Continent, every Void Mother Beast is actually a coordinate guiding the Plague Evil God's descent. The stronger the Mother Beast, the more prominent this coordinate, and the greater the power the Plague Evil God can extend across the void and world barriers."
"Fortunately, this Void Mother Beast hadn't grown to the point of devouring an entire world, so the evil god's power released before its death wasn't strong enough."
Hearing this, the old mage instead breathed a sigh of relief: "So, that big thing is really dead?"
"Of course."
Standing on the orbital path of Neptune Star's satellite, Joshua looked down at the surface of this giant gas planet and said softly: "It has completely turned to ashes."
At this moment, although the fireball of the Blazing Sun Flash was extinguished by the power of the Plague Evil God's coordinate released before the Void Mother Beast's death, the aftermath of Joshua's attack still formed a massive firestorm on Neptune Star's surface. This storm mixed with Neptune Star's original violent air currents, creating a huge crimson storm cluster. From a space perspective, it looked like a giant red spot embedded on Neptune Star's blue and yellow surface, moving and expanding with the airflow.
According to calculations, barring any unforeseen circumstances, this violent firestorm would persist on Neptune Star's surface for over five thousand years, perhaps even forever, becoming an eternal landscape.
But at this moment, neither Joshua nor Nostradamus had the energy to care about these matters. After the long battle, having finally defeated the enemy, they dragged their exhausted bodies to the vicinity of the largest ship in the Midgardian fleet. As the two arrived, this ship, named the *Forerunner*, quickly opened its docking entrance, originally intended for space fighters. The warrior and the old mage entered from there.
After passing through the tractor beam and entering the hangar, originally used to store space fighters, from the vacuum of space, Joshua found that almost all the important crew members of this ship, except for the few needed to maintain its operation, were gathered here. At the head was the Commander of the Midgard Central Fleet, Commander Taquin. This old Midgardian, whose chest was covered with medals, took a few steps forward upon seeing the warrior and Nostradamus enter the ship. Just as Joshua expected the old man to express his gratitude profusely for defeating the Void Mother Beast, accompanied by a uniform 'thump' sound, all the Midgardians in the ship knelt on one knee, bowed their heads, and paid their respects to the warrior and the old mage with reverence.
"Great descendants of the Saint, arrivals from the void... The terrifying demon has been vanquished by your mighty power, and this star domain has returned to peace... We cannot express our gratitude in words; all praise is so pale and feeble."
This old soldier, who had once planned to use psionics to forcibly control Joshua to fight for the Midgardians, knelt on one knee before the surprised warrior and the others. He closed his eyes and spoke in a contemplative, calm tone, with the most sincere and earnest words: "Two galaxies, hundreds of millions of Midgardians live because of you. We have no way to repay this."
Saying this, he raised his head, his eyes meeting the warrior's.
"From now on, you are our new god."
---
In the Starry World, just as Joshua and Nostradamus were being hailed as new gods by the many Midgardians, in a distant corner of the multiverse, within a small star system world, an anomaly that was about to sweep across the multiverse was about to occur.
Much larger than a flat-earth world, yet far smaller than the Starry World, within this world's membrane, a star and seven planets were nurtured. But unknown from when, at the center of this world, where the sun originally was, had been replaced by a round, white, biological mass. Its shape was like a cocoon, woven from countless fungal threads, yet so vast it was unimaginable—because this cocoon had even enveloped the star, converting its immense energy for its own use. Countless 'tiny' creatures, like moths, circled it, flying freely in the vacuum of space.
This star-enveloping cocoon was pulsating, as if it had a heartbeat, as if it was gestating something. Each pulsation caused space to tremble, making the entire galaxy shudder slightly. The cocoon's pulsations were very regular, unchanged for hundreds of years. But suddenly, at this moment, the pulsations stopped.
Because the Evil God, which enveloped the entire world and even absorbed the sun into its body, sensed a message transmitted back from a child entity it had scattered to a distant part of the multiverse, just before its death.
Perhaps because the destruction came too suddenly, and death came too swiftly, the message sent back by the child entity was very brief: in that distant Starry World, it had encountered a life form more powerful than estimated and had been defeated in a direct confrontation, without even the chance to transmit complete combat data.
This was not surprising, nor did it require the attention of the massive super lifeform. There were countless powerful beings in the multiverse, and those capable of killing a child entity were numerous. The Sublimation Virus itself was constantly absorbing life information to evolve into such an existence. The death of a mere child entity was hardly a major event.
But this time, the cause of the child entity's death was exceptionally special.
"Beginning analysis... Material analysis failed. Simulating evolutionary path... Simulation failed."
Using the energy impacts, physical attacks, and some fragments of the enemy's body that the child entity had personally endured, the massive super lifeform attempted to reverse-engineer the enemy's physical matter and energy system. This method had previously allowed it to decipher the energy systems and operational methods of countless life forms. But this time, the calculation system, which had never made an error before, encountered a peculiar substance and energy system beyond its computational scope. No matter how it calculated or estimated, it could not uncover the secrets behind them. It could even be seen that, beneath a certain layer of the cocoon, countless strange humanoid bodies were rapidly growing and enlarging in a culture fluid, but because the system lacked certain crucial elements, they self-destructed, failing to replicate successfully.
The Evil God, expanding through the void, never cared about imitating powerful beings in the multiverse. But the fact that this special existence had defeated its child entity in a direct confrontation stirred a vague thought within it, an entity whose first and only goal was evolution and sublimation.
"High-value life form."
"Worth capturing."