Chapter 23: Self-Awareness
At this moment, the rain poured down in torrents, and countless azure thunderbolts crashed down from the clouds. Joshua stood upon the earth, lightning striking beside him, yet unable to approach his body. The warrior left the Soul Puppets no time to react. Instead, he extended his right hand and clenched his fist tightly toward the void—behind him, on the eternally rotating metal ring, the white gemstone suddenly blazed with brilliant light.
So-called superpowers are, in essence, miniature versions of the Steel Authority. They combine with a person's life force to reveal infinite mysteries. During his time in the void, Joshua had collected a large number of Steel Particles, and he had sensed then that these particles themselves could be fused. By gathering many Steel Particles of the same type and merging them, one could artificially create something akin to Steel Shards.
The six-colored gemstones were the product of fusing the Steel Particles he had gathered in the medical district. This product was crude, usable only once before needing to be recharged. But even so, the power of this authority was still formidable beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
The silver gemstone represented pure Steel Force, signifying control over matter—capable of creation and dissolution alike. The azure gemstone embodied natural phenomena, able to conjure clouds, mist, and thunder from nothing, bringing down lightning, fire, and torrential rain.
And now, the white gemstone he used represented pure vibration.
As white light flickered, an invisible wave spread outward. A high-pitched hum rang through the air, like the roar of dozens or even hundreds of dragons. The swampy ground within nearly a kilometer began to tremble violently. In this earthquake-like shaking, the mud quivered and surged into tides, the entire land transforming into a dark brown sea. Hundreds of Soul Puppets trapped within struggled to escape, but the high-frequency vibrations embedded in the mud directly shattered and dismantled them, turning them into pools of oil and scattered parts.
"Superpowers... I see."
Joshua stood still, unmoving, watching the superpower he had unleashed wreak havoc across the land. He seemed to gain some insight, but his expression remained unchanged.
Yet the hunter army did not collapse. They continued to advance. Even though over three hundred puppets had been swallowed and destroyed by the mud and lightning strikes, more than three hundred more followed. With the hum of air being torn apart, these pure killing machines finally broke through layer after layer of blockade and reached their target.
A giant puppet, already over five meters tall and still growing, expanding.
This was a mechanical structure never before seen in the Siberia World. Its body was jagged and ferocious, its arms and joints covered in sharp blades and ramming horns. On either side of its helmet, two steel horns like dragon horns protruded, with lightning flowing across them, flashing with azure electric sparks. And on the chest of this giant puppet, a golden vortex-like core was rapidly taking shape, emitting a scorching heat that vaporized the surrounding rain into mist.
It continued to grow, growing without pause. One could see that beneath the feet of this motionless puppet, the soil was sinking at a visible rate. The surrounding mud seemed drawn by some force, merging into the puppet's body. Even the wreckage of damaged puppets in the mud was absorbed, becoming nourishment for the giant puppet.
A heavy-armored puppet was the first to break through the blockade of rain, thunder, and mud tides. It raised its head's observation equipment, only to see a colossal being twice its height, and the other's clenched fist swinging in a straightforward, righteous punch!
Boom! It was like a volcanic eruption. The atmosphere exploded outright. With a thunderous roar even more shocking than the sky's thunder, an unmatched force accompanied by a fierce gale suddenly spread outward—merely the pure wind pressure of the punch pierced a cylindrical void hundreds of meters long through the rainstorm. The violent power even blasted away the surrounding mud swamp, exposing the sandstone deep beneath the ground!
The leading heavy-armored puppet took the full force of this blow. Its armor instantly burst into flames and shattered, its body torn apart. Its parts flew in all directions like countless exploding cannonball fragments. These fragments alone took down over a dozen puppets, while more puppets had their soul cores extinguished by the penetrating force within the punch's wind, standing frozen with no further reaction.
In the distance, War Chariot and the others stared blankly. They watched as lightning flashed and thunder roared around them, as the earth trembled in the pouring rain, as the once-familiar puppet grew larger and larger, then delivered a punch that made everyone shudder.
Powerful... to the point of fear.
This kind of strength was truly terrifying. Even War Chariot would need considerable effort to deal with a single heavy-armored puppet equipped with inert energy metal armor, and that was in a one-on-one scenario. But that giant machine, with just one strike, had directly disabled dozens of puppets.
And it was still growing.
"No, be careful!"
War Chariot finally snapped back to his senses, but at that moment, a series of entirely different, powerful energy fluctuations suddenly erupted around the giant puppet!
"Requesting superpower unit loading—"
"Emergency protocol approved, activating overload state—"
"Target strength exceeds measurement parameters, requesting full armament release—"
Within the hunter army, one specially constructed Soul Puppet after another paused briefly. Their bodies erupted with waves of energy, each distinct from the others. Instantly, various abilities unfolded in the rainstorm. The hunter army's greatest trump card, which had allowed them to chase the Siberia superpower resistance across the world, was now fully revealed!
That was over a hundred superpower puppets with special abilities!
Bang! A surge of air rolled as a bird-like Soul Puppet shook its entire body, then shot like an arrow toward Joshua. Its speed had long surpassed several times the speed of sound, with rapidly oscillating air blades extending at the front of its body, capable of cutting through solid rock and metal.
On the other side, a pure white Soul Puppet glowed with faint light. An invisible telekinetic force directly lifted the ground, shaping it into a stone ball weighing dozens of tons, then hurled it like a meteor hammer toward the giant puppet.
Besides these, many other strange abilities were unleashed simultaneously—flames, ice, lightning, acid, rays, disintegration, explosions... With the Soul Puppets' precise coordination, all attacks not only failed to conflict but achieved a one-plus-one-greater-than-two effect. The aftermath spread across the land, stirring up a wild, hot wind. Dozens or hundreds of swift steel puppets darted through the rain and mist, leaping through the lightning. They surpassed the speed of sound, making the air shriek in anguish. The machines wielding superpowers overloaded and erupted, then—
All charged toward the giant puppet!
Seeing this, Invisible and Explosion beside War Chariot shuddered. Under such an assault, no matter how well they hid, they could not escape. Even the mere aftermath of the superpowers could easily kill them.
But in the next instant, just as everyone thought the giant puppet was doomed, a brilliant explosion flashed and then dimmed. Another thunderous roar followed. When the distant superhumans opened their eyes again, they could only stare in shock. The Soul Puppets at the forefront had been twisted into lumps of scrap metal by a tremendous force. The giant puppet now held another superpower puppet, its body ablaze with raging flames, and tore it into two pieces with a calm motion.
The bird-like puppet had its head and upper body completely gone. It had been struck by a single finger at the point where its superpower was strongest yet most fragile. The violent force, mixed with energy backlash, had blown its entire upper half to pieces.
The white telekinetic puppet was flattened into a paper-thin mass. Two giant hands it could not budge pressed in from left and right, crushing it like a hydraulic press into a thin sheet.
So-called simultaneity was merely relative. For Joshua, the Soul Puppets' simultaneous attacks were almost all openings. In a moment that would be critical for ordinary superhumans, he had enough time to execute several actions. Just now, over seven superpower puppets had attacked from all sides simultaneously. They thought no one could handle all these strikes at once. But Joshua could. Not only could he, but he could counter them one by one in order.
He didn't even need to use superpowers.
The powerful puppet army had met the wrong opponent.
At this moment, War Chariot in the distance could see all kinds of superpowers blasting toward Joshua's location. Countless strange shockwaves, energy beams mixed with eerie mental and soul fluctuations, all struck at once. But the giant puppet seemed to have no intention of using any special abilities. Facing the overwhelming tide of superpowers, Joshua simply clenched his fist. In the next instant, countless fist shadows burst forth, carrying fierce wind pressure. Each fist shadow exploded the air, shattering every incoming attack!
The giant puppet finally took a step. It moved, and the earth shook. With each step, it flashed hundreds of meters away. Every time Joshua struck, he directly destroyed a superpower puppet. He used pure impact force to clash head-on with various superpowers, then crushed them without any fancy tricks.
Controlling earth and stone? Smashed. Manipulating particles? Blown away. Creating temperature differences? Pulverized. With the overwhelming difference in size and strength, the giant puppet, now nearly ten meters tall, only needed to reach out to destroy a superpower puppet.
The entire hunter army was helpless. No attack could harm the giant puppet. Even if a few special superpowers managed to damage it, the injured areas would self-repair within seconds. And as almost all superpower puppets were completely defeated, the remaining ordinary puppets naturally became mere targets, easily swept away.
"Is this... a superpower?"
Watching Joshua bury an entire hunter army like cleaning up trash, War Chariot stared blankly ahead and muttered softly.
"No."
As if hearing the question, the massive—or rather, colossal—steel puppet did not turn around. It raised its right hand, crushed the second-to-last puppet in its grip, and answered in a deep voice: "This is Steel Force."
With that, it released its hand. The shattered remains of the Soul Puppet fell from its giant hand, only the pale blue fragments of the soul core turning into smoke, drifting away in the air.
Due to the rainstorm, the swamp, the thunder, the earthquake, and Joshua's personal intervention, the hunter army of nearly ten thousand had been almost completely annihilated.
When Joshua used his Steel Force to activate the authority of those gemstones, through that familiar yet unfamiliar wave sensation, he fully understood that his Steel Force was actually very similar to these authorities. The difference between the two was that each authority was singular, while his Steel Force possessed multiple powerful abilities.
Yes—controlling matter, manifesting creations, unmatched divine strength, material assimilation, evolutionary transformation, self-evolution... Joshua's Steel Force itself represented a conglomerate of dozens of powerful superpowers. So in the end, he simply stopped using those one-time superpower gemstones and instead used his most familiar methods to solve problems.
It seemed like brute force, but in reality, it was the simultaneous action of abilities like 'self-evolution' and 'material assimilation.' Without the rapid transformation brought by Steel Force, how could an ordinary steel puppet withstand the assault of thousands of heavy-armored puppets?
And so it ended. Except for the last special puppet that looked different, all other puppets were dismantled into pieces by Joshua. Not a single puppet in the entire hunter army could stop Joshua, who used pure Steel Force. The warrior even had the illusion that if he could extract the elements within his Steel Force, he might be able to draw out seven or eight Steel Shards, granting their possessor various special and powerful abilities—even immortality was not entirely impossible.
Thinking further, the Steel Serpent, a great existence born with Steel Force, how many authorities did it wield? How many abilities could it split into?
But that was just a thought. Besides Joshua himself, no one could split his Steel Force, let alone the world.
Thinking this, Joshua arrived before the last remaining puppet of the hunter army.
This was a very ordinary-looking puppet. At a glance, it was impossible to distinguish it from other ordinary puppets... But for Joshua, who could see electromagnetic waves and directly monitor electromagnetic signals, this puppet emitted and received far too many signals—abnormally many. It seemed to bear the entire communication of the hunter army. All external signals from the Soul Puppets had to pass through its relay, and all incoming commands had to go through its relay to reach the other puppets.
In other words, this puppet was the communication hub, even the control hub, of the entire hunter army.
Raising a giant hand that could firmly grip the puppet, Joshua grabbed this last remaining puppet, the core puppet. Its limbs had already been broken off by the warrior, leaving only a bare torso. Silver light flickered between Joshua's palms as pure Steel Force seeped into the puppet's body.
Joshua planned to use Steel Force to directly read the information stored in this puppet. He even intended to use this puppet's unique communication channel to trace back the existence behind the communication.
But just a few seconds after the Steel Force began eroding its body, the warrior couldn't help but let out a soft exclamation.
"Wait."
Lifting the Soul Puppet slightly, as if trying to see its structure more clearly, Joshua frowned and said in a rather surprised tone: "Is this... self-awareness?"
"A Soul Puppet can actually develop self-awareness?"