# Chapter 37: Never Retreat
"Haier Mu, Salu Ka, familiar ones."
The man's icy voice shook the atmosphere, awakening the Demon Lords who had involuntarily taken a few steps back from the fear rising from the depths of their hearts. They shook their heads, breaking free from their shock. Haier Mu and Salu Ka knew that this moment was their best chance to defeat Joshua.
The two Demon Lords exchanged glances, seeing resolve in each other's eyes. And so, the next instant.
The battle began.
Cold light flashed. In a thousandth of a second, the pitch-black demonic shadow shattered the atmosphere at godlike speed, its body mutated to a degree approaching or even surpassing the 'Talamu Mountain-Eating Worm,' capable of cutting through Adamantite armor like a hot knife through butter. Salu Ka's full-force charge carried a torrent of demonic energy, tearing through the fragile space of the Bloodmoon Abyss, revealing the black void behind. At its side, blazing black energy currents stirred up terrifying lightning that shattered everything.
Radiance flared. A surging tide of energy roared. Remaining in place, Haier Mu directly unfolded its true form—a ten-thousand-meter coiled mountain serpent. Without hesitation, it raised its full power, allowing the colorless radiance rising within its body to condense endlessly. Representing the purest and most terrifying force in the world—the power of a star's complete annihilation—it radiated from the giant serpent's maw. Starlight exploded, surging relentlessly toward the Steel Giant's battered and broken body.
Demon Lord, Insect Demon King Salu Ka. Demon Lord, Eye Demon King Haier Mu. Two legendary beings cast aside all past conflicts and their innate mutual disgust, simultaneously attacking the formidable enemy high above in the Bloodmoon Abyss!
Joshua took a deep breath. He had long known they would join forces to attack him at this moment—it was the optimal choice. Even if he stood in their position, he would do the same.
The Black Dragon King, the Nether Sea Dragon Ke A Nuo... As the saying goes, an army driven by grief is invincible. The Black Dragon had been such a desperate warrior. Though it hadn't achieved true victory, its relentless, gap-free fierce battle had indeed inflicted tremendous losses on the warrior. No one understood his current situation better than himself. Joshua knew he was severely wounded—various organs that coordinated and maintained his body had been gouged out by the Black Dragon. No matter how quickly Steel Force regenerated, the two Demon Lords would never give him any chance. This was their best opportunity to kill him.
If this battle were one-on-one, or even one-on-two, that would indeed be the case—the warrior would face unprecedented danger. But unfortunately, the demons had miscalculated one thing.
This was the Bloodmoon Abyss. This was Joshua's territory.
He had never planned to fight just one from the very beginning.
Watching the two Greater Demons exchange glances, confirm their intentions, and finally gather power to strike, the warrior who had been coldly observing exhaled. Instantly, a fierce wind arose, stirring up a raging tempest across the entire Bloodmoon Abyss. Countless rocks and dust danced wildly, whipping up surging sandstorms. At this moment, Joshua seemed to become the center of the world, with all things shifting because of him.
Just then, Salu Ka, already charging, felt alarm bells ringing in its heart—it sensed something extremely ominous, something dangerously wrong was happening. But the Insect Demon Lord had no retreat; it could only maintain full speed and continue its charge.
Haier Mu also sensed it. Something like a sleeping giant had awakened from its ancient slumber, a sacred being opening its long-closed eyes. And at that moment, at the center of the Bloodmoon, a small orb of light cheerfully swayed around the giant cocoon of light at the Bloodmoon's core. It chimed once, then submerged into it.
And so, the light awakened.
High above, the Bloodmoon hanging at the highest point suddenly bloomed with a white radiance. A pillar of light, blazing white tinged with pale gold, enveloped Joshua's entire body. At this moment, behind the Steel Giant, the void suddenly ignited into a boundless sea of flames. A circle of eerie black-red light patterns appeared behind the warrior—like a demonic summoning, filled with blasphemous fallen runes. But now, these patterns were gradually changing, with a trace of holiness stirring at their core.
The Bloodmoon Abyss favored its warrior. It believed in everything he did and supported him unwaveringly. Now, his wish was its wish, and its wish was his wish.
This was their wish.
Energy from the world converged. Surging, radiant light was born within Joshua's body. In an instant, internal injuries were repaired, Steel Force regenerated. In less than a thousandth of a second, the Steel Giant reappeared in the world in its most perfect form—clad in silver armor, thick flames of light surging on his fists. Joshua walked out from the light, his gaze calm and indifferent. Facing Salu Ka, which had directly charged at him, now completely mutated into an otherworldly monster, the warrior silently raised his right hand, fingers together like a blade, and struck downward!
"Boom!"
Though it was merely a hand blade falling, it produced a roar like a volcanic eruption. The two collided, causing the entire Bloodmoon Abyss to ring with terrifying thunder. But this thunder lasted only an instant, because all the air within hundreds of kilometers was completely expelled into vacuum by the impact of the two legends. In the distance, a stone island floated in midair, but it encountered the explosive gale arriving from afar—and the next instant, this enormous rocky mountain island turned to ash like scattered sand, leaving only a shadow on one's retina.
But strangely, the two who had collided seemed not to have left the center of impact. In that battle zone already shrouded by intense light and thunder, no trace of living activity could be seen. And at this moment, Haier Mu's long-accumulated ultimate spell, 'Star's Blaze,' unhesitatingly surged toward that center.
A blazing radiance that rendered all color, touch, and direction meaningless. The final light that annihilated all things turned into a stream of light that could melt stars, causing even the vacuum to burn and distort. Destruction spread, silent and dead.
And under the impact of this intense light, the thunder and flames shrouding the battle center evaporated and annihilated, finally revealing the situation of the two combatants. But shockingly, Joshua and Salu Ka, who had violently collided, had not separated. Salu Ka's mutated great horn had pierced through the warrior's abdomen, while Joshua's hand blade had split open the Insect Demon's skull. The demon struggled desperately to escape, but the warrior's remaining three arms tightly restrained it. Facing the Star's Blaze gathering in the distance, about to strike, the Insect Demon Lord's face was filled with terror and despair—according to its plan with Haier Mu, it was supposed to make the warrior lose mobility as much as possible, while it escaped the following Star's Blaze attack using the opponent's counterattack.
Its plan had been successful. From beginning to end, Joshua hadn't moved half a step... just along with it.
Before the Star's Blaze arrived, one could hear the core humming in his chest, hot steel boiling within his body, surging energy tides raising tsunamis within Joshua's physical form. A violent roar erupted. Instantly, Salu Ka, tightly bound in his embrace, felt with terror an immense force pressing from all around—a pressure like being completely wrapped by a planet's core.
—Had the Black Dragon King just been fighting against this kind of monster's strength?
Salu Ka had no time to think about this anymore. Accompanied by the crisp sound of bones breaking, Joshua's arms began to tighten. The Insect Demon Lord's shell, simulated from the legendary creatures of the Talamu world, shattered inch by inch, causing deep green plasma to spray like a fountain toward the sky, filled with energy-laden bodily fluids. Salu Ka's body was twisted beyond recognition. It wasn't dead yet, but had temporarily lost its ability to resist. Joshua ended his 'embrace,' released his grip, and threw the tattered Salu Ka toward the direction of the Star's Blaze.
Looking ahead, Joshua raised his head. Indescribable light illuminated the warrior's face, shadows stretching around his angular features, making him appear especially ferocious.
"You've already used this move on me once. Its power isn't enough."
Joshua muttered softly to himself. This was his first time speaking since beginning the battle with the Demon Lords. Facing the gamma ray cannon that destroyed everything, the man grinned, revealing his gleaming white teeth, and laughed heartily: "But there's some improvement this time."
The blazing white light along the way devoured everything—dust, atmosphere, stone islands, thunder, plasma streams, Salu Ka. Finally, it surged toward its last target: Joshua, still standing motionless in place. No, not motionless. Joshua raised his four arms and crossed them before his chest. Around him, an unparalleled magnetic field was spinning.
The magnetic field couldn't stop gamma rays, but he hadn't intended to stop them anyway. This magnetic field, powerful enough to lift all the iron sand in the Wind-Erosion Desert into the air, was merely Joshua's 'normal state' when not suppressing his power... After a long period of cultivation, having obtained extensive knowledge of Steel Force from the Chronos Ancient Dragon and the Earth Temple's secret texts, Joshua had raised his Steel Force fusion rate to over eighty-five percent. Now, with his own mass alone, he could bend light, cause the rock layers of the Northern Ural Plains to take flight, and split the earth into abysses.
As for the strength of his main body, aside from the Black Dragon King's negative energy that eliminated strong nuclear force and disintegrated all things into basic particles, it was essentially indestructible—at least, gamma ray cannons of Haier Mu's level couldn't destroy it.
The destructive light wave spread toward the warrior's direction. Everything happened within the short span of less than a second—from Haier Mu opening its mouth, preparing, to spewing. When the Eye Demon Lord sensed that Salu Ka had been defeated, the Star's Blaze had already been unleashed. Unimaginable intense light turned the world into black and white, swallowing everything. In an instant, it submerged Salu Ka, who was rapidly regenerating, and then engulfed Joshua, who stood motionless in place, into the light.
The moisture in the air disappeared. Incalculable hydrogen and oxygen burned away. Distant stone islands slowly melted from the overflowing heat. Magma solidified into spheres in midair, drifting. The light on Haier Mu's body dimmed for an instant, then brightened again. It nervously looked toward the direction of its attack, where plasma and thunder filled the space, a sea of scorching particles surging like the scene of the universe's heat death.
Where Haier Mu's enhanced Star's Blaze had passed, space shattered into large cracks. The barrier between the world and the void was ravaged again and again. It continued to spread and expand into the distance—because there was no air, there was no sound. In this silence more terrifying than death, everything happened silently, filling the demon with unease and fear.
And the next instant, from within the endless light.
A foot stepped out.
It was forged from steel left after a star had burned out—one of the hardest substances in the world. Its surface was a golden red, with unimaginable heat radiating outward, stirring the plasma sea. Following it, another foot stepped out.
A body of steel, entirely golden red, as if overloaded to the extreme, appeared before the Demon Lord's eyes. This steel body was fierce and streamlined, all parts angular and three-dimensional, as if born only for slaughter and battle.
The Steel Giant reappeared in the world. His entire body bore not a single wound. The Star's Blaze, capable of instantly destroying cities and annihilating all things, could only heat his surface to red, leaving not even a trace of melting.
Haier Mu had improved, but Joshua had improved faster.
The giant, whose mass had reached an unprecedented twenty-seven million tons, lowered his head, gazing down at the giant serpent beneath him.
Haier Mu met Joshua's gaze. The Steel Giant's eyes flickered with a blend of silver and golden light—indifferent, utterly emotionless. No contempt, no regard. The Eye Demon Lord knew that this head wasn't even the giant's vital point; destroying it would be useless. And whether the light dancing in those eyes was the warrior's thoughts or pure energy radiance, it had no idea.
—He... where is its vital point? Does it have a weakness? Can it truly be destroyed, killed? Those runes behind it seem like His Majesty's... Could it also be an Abyss Lord?
Unknown. Everything was unknown. Neither the possibility of victory nor the hope of escape existed. The path ahead was pitch black, like an abyss.
Endless thoughts echoed in Haier Mu's mind. The demon couldn't see through the giant before it at all—neither its thoughts, weaknesses, nor actions could it understand. This was incomprehensible, dark, unknown. And so, uncontrollable fear surged from the Demon Lord's heart. An emotion called despair spread through its mind.
It wanted to kneel—then tremble and surrender, just as it had knelt to the Demon King Goliath and pledged loyalty. But Haier Mu didn't do so. Not just because its current form was a ten-thousand-meter giant serpent, but because it didn't want to, and it couldn't.
Grinding its sharp teeth, pulling itself from helpless despair, Haier Mu slowly straightened its serpentine body. It couldn't surrender. It was already a failure. If it knelt again, wouldn't even death be without dignity? Moreover, it bore the Demon King's command. It had been entrusted with the important task of finding the Mycroft creation elements.
It carried the hopes of all demons in the Sixth Abyss.
And so, it would never retreat half a step.