Chapter 30: Faith
The Siberia World remained dark, dust-filled, with rain composed of lasers and thunder falling from the sky. Upon the ground, fragments of the earth's crust were lifted one after another by two different great forces, then hurled at their respective enemies.
Mountains shook, hurricanes raged, molten steel and magma spread. Standing amidst the sea of fire, Joshua raised his hand. A defensive shield formed from a high-speed rotating cloud of metal appeared above his head. He directly attacked the main body of Fatlervi with his own transcendent power. It could be seen that the Time Pusher continuously retreated under the relentless assault, but even so, he still suffered some minor injuries. His right arm was burned to ashes by a nuclear fusion sphere Joshua created out of thin air. It was visible that the cross-section was not human flesh and blood, but an energy body flickering with a deep blue light.
"Interesting."
Standing at the center of the high sky amidst the overflowing scorching hot winds, Fatlervi's eyes lit up slightly. Even when injured, there was no fluctuation in his expression. Facing Joshua's attack, he first dodged, then after a moment of thought, he reversed time once again.
Everything returned to the beginning, but this time, Fatlervi did not use his familiar superpower. Instead, he began to use a rather unskilled technique, a counterattack copied from Joshua's methods. He raised his hand, pointing at Joshua, and the invisible gravitational field began to pressurize—while Joshua, who retained his memory of the reversal, did the same. A focusing mirror identical to the one Fatlervi had used earlier appeared before him, releasing a condensed cutting light beam. The two sides began to attack each other using each other's techniques.
This time, the battle was exceptionally brutal. Both sides threw off all restraints, unleashing their destructive power without any regard. Lasers, flames, thunder, freezing, acid, and the like—Fatlervi used telekinesis to lift a piece of the earth's crust and then pressed it toward Joshua, while Joshua, in turn, compressed this massive crust, larger than a mountain, into a material block the size of a house and hurled it back at fifteen times the speed of sound.
This material block formed from the crust was dodged. It arced through the air and struck the ground, instantly shattering the continental plate within a thousand miles. It plunged deep into the mantle, throwing the structure of the Siberia World into utter chaos.
Time reversed again and again. In the fierce, all-out exchange, the world was ravaged like a toy. It could be seen that the earth's crust cracked, continents sank, gravity and electromagnetic forces were used as weapons to attack each other. Under the influence of Joshua's Steel Force and Fatlervi's superpower, the Siberia Continent was repeatedly leveled to the ground, collapsed into giant pits, and even debris floated in the high sky, forming floating islands. Countless bizarre scenes appeared at the center of the world.
Under the power of Steel Force and countless authorities, the once indestructible mountains and crust were merely cream crackers. Joshua and Fatlervi were like two normal humans living in a world made of paper and cream. With a mere gesture, they could destroy the world's ecological balance, erase civilizations, and turn all intelligent creations into nothingness.
Through these repeated reversals, Joshua, while unleashing his full destructive power, finally noticed one thing: the condition for Fatlervi's time reversal.
Undoubtedly, Fatlervi was very strong... His claim of having no good way to deal with Joshua was not truly the case. The Time Pusher was merely wary of a certain boundary. Once this boundary was triggered, no matter how far the battle with Joshua had progressed, he would unhesitatingly restart time and begin the fight anew.
And this boundary, if the warrior had not guessed wrong, was the continued existence of the Soul Puppets—the importance of this matter far surpassed that of eliminating him.
"You care a great deal about these Soul Puppets?"
Upon saying this, Joshua noticed that Fatlervi's rock-solid expression finally showed a trace of change. The shell forged from millennia of solitude finally cracked. Instantly, the Time Pusher raised his scepter high and pointed it directly at Joshua—in that moment, Joshua felt the atoms composing his body begin to riot, seemingly on the verge of a chain reaction of fission and fusion. Although the riot was suppressed by Joshua in an instant, there was no doubt that if he had not suppressed it, this massive puppet body would have become the largest nuclear firework in the history of the Siberia World in the blink of an eye.
Blocking the opponent's furious strike, Joshua looked toward the spiral tower. Scanning its enormous structure, he saw the incredibly complex mysterious runes and smooth energy array patterns upon it. This was technology that Fatlervi had independently researched over thousands of years—from this alone, he was undoubtedly a genius, capable of driving the world's progress single-handedly. But this was not the point. Joshua's gaze sharpened as he spotted a small figure.
It was a Soul Puppet, resembling a little girl, floating behind the window of the high tower.
At that moment, she was silently watching the high sky, watching the battle between Fatlervi and Joshua. No matter how powerful the attacks were, they could not frighten her. The girl Soul Puppet stared unblinkingly at Fatlervi, her eyes revealing the deepest reverence and admiration from the very core of her being.
Upon noticing this, Joshua finally diverted some attention to observe the details of the Siberia World.
The battle between two powerful beings who cared nothing for the lives around them was devastating. At the center of the Siberia World, tens of thousands of Soul Puppets fled wildly from the collapsing and burning Soul Factory. They escaped the center of the battlefield, but as Joshua recklessly tore apart the earth's crust and created meteorites to bombard Fatlervi, the rolling waves of heat and high temperature ignited everything around them.
No matter how fast the Soul Puppets were, they could not outrun the shockwaves traveling at supersonic speeds. Their metal bodies melted, flowing as molten steel on the ground. Those slightly more heat-resistant turned into fireballs and continued running, but as they ran, they eventually fell to their knees and stopped moving.
Fatlervi dodged a mass-wave slash from Joshua. The condensed mass wave continued to spread backward, eventually striking the eastern mountain range of Siberia. Instantly, the destructive mass impact destroyed everything. A terrifying geological disaster occurred. Mountains collapsed like dominoes, followed by a massive earthquake that shook half the continent—in just over ten seconds, the mountain range was reduced to rubble, the ground sank into a plain, and within hundreds of miles, only debris and lava remained.
The entire geological structure of the east was destroyed. The original highest peak collapsed into rubble, and along with it disappeared all the Soul Puppet gardens within hundreds of miles.
Then, just as Joshua had predicted, Fatlervi's calm, unruffled expression slightly furrowed once more. He gripped his scepter tightly and reversed time again.
But unlike before, Joshua had gradually grasped the opponent's pattern.
Another exchange ended. On the land covered in scorched earth and ruins, Fatlervi prepared to reverse time once again. By now, seventeen stars in the sky had dimmed.
"Faith."
And just before Fatlervi was about to reverse the flow of time, Joshua stood amidst the lava-hot winds and spoke in a low voice: "I understand—the Soul Puppets cannot be exterminated. That is the bottom line for your time reversal."
"You are the god of the Soul Puppets—you need faith."
"I have sensed your divinity. Perhaps that is the reason you can reverse time."