# Chapter 31: The Beast's Stomach 6200
Joshua's battle was inevitably a lonely one.
Perhaps this is difficult to understand, and sounds overly sentimental, but the truth is indeed so—Joshua's battles are hard to fight alongside others. Or rather, only when he is alone can his allies unleash their greatest strength.
The reason is simple: the strong gravitational effect does not distinguish between friend and foe. It could even be said that because allies are closer, their attacks are more easily affected by Joshua's gravity.
As long as Joshua exists within a crowd, all attacks will be absorbed by the strong gravitational effect onto his body. Even light will have its trajectory deflected, unable to hit the enemy... He cannot fight together; the more people there are, the greater the restrictions on himself and his allies. Conversely, the more enemies there are, the easier it is for Joshua to perform, even like a fish in water.
Perhaps only the old Pope could truly understand this, which is why Eagle did not stop Joshua from leaving World One.
Crack.
The crisp sound of glass shattering rang out. As the space-time channel was pierced and shattered by the massive gravitational fluctuation, the silver giant cocoon, charging forward at fifteen percent the speed of light, smashed through all obstacles before it, successfully breaking through the space-time barrier and arriving at the other end of space-time.
The massive silver planet thus abruptly arrived in a dark, silent cosmic void.
The endless black mist and the pure holy light flickering in the distance had vanished. Countless stars and the dark void replaced everything in the original field of vision. As Joshua pierced through the space-time channel and forcibly arrived in this unknown region of the multiverse, he sensed that he had already left the dark zone. Countless stars shone brilliantly against the dark background, and the light of the Great Magic Tide was like a nebula, driving the movement of all things.
One could see a spiral energy galaxy rotating in the darkness. Against this backdrop, countless small worlds floated within it, with hazy halos appearing and disappearing around these miniature worlds, like clouds that had not yet dispersed... This indicated that these worlds had only just been born, their internal material structures not yet stable—and at the very center of this galactic structure was a deep darkness that swallowed all light, with countless worlds revolving around it.
Without any hesitation, Joshua flew directly toward that deep darkness. He could see without thinking that the so-called darkness was nothing more than an infinite convergence of black mist, and Joshua's target was precisely that black mist.
The neutron star silver cocoon, moving at fifteen percent the speed of light, charged straight toward the black mist cluster. As he moved, the surrounding space-time underwent violent distortion, even creating "relativistic phenomena." This distortion caused space-time expansion and mass variation effects. For Joshua, this meant that his already enormous mass further increased during high-speed movement, and the 0.97 seconds he experienced equaled one second in the outside world.
Because of his speed and mass, time slowed down for Joshua. The shining galaxy had one of its spiral arms mercilessly shattered by the silver flying star, causing several worlds to deviate from their orbits. The nebula composed of pure energy could not stop the warrior at all. In less than a second, he crossed the distance of several worlds and was about to crash into the black mist aggregation at the galactic center.
By now, Joshua could see that inside the infinite black mist was a massive but dim world. Yet he had no intention of deviating, even though this impact of his would be enough to completely destroy an entire world.
[Mycroftian—Human.]
However, the black mist cluster did not remain stationary. The moment Joshua appeared in this multiverse region, the black mist had already sensed the enemy's arrival. By the time Joshua shattered the energy galaxy's spiral arm and approached the galactic center, the black mist was ready. The vast darkness writhed and surged, then suddenly extended from within an enormous hand, large enough to cover a planet's surface, blocking the way forward.
It was like a person trying to catch a thrown stone coming from afar.
But how could Joshua's true body be compared to a thrown stone? If a meteorite several hundred meters in size struck a planet at one-tenth the speed of light, that planet would hardly escape destruction. And Joshua, with the density of a neutron star and mass comparable to a planetary satellite, striking at fifteen percent the speed of light—this force would be enough to shatter the entire Mycroft Continent seven or eight times over with ease.
But the moment Joshua struck the black giant hand, everything abruptly stopped.
No explosion, no impact, no energy wave of mass-energy conversion level sufficient to destroy material technical structures. Even the elemental particles slowly drifting in the surrounding void felt no change. Joshua's speed was instantly reduced to "zero"—and the next moment, the black giant hand immediately clenched. The warrior, having reacted, frowned and immediately detonated the outer shell of his surface to generate reverse thrust, rapidly retreating.
—Kinetic energy! All kinetic energy was absorbed!
In that brief moment of contact, Joshua had already understood what method the black mist had used—all kinetic energy, all energy was absorbed. The impact sufficient to shatter a planet vanished like a clay ox entering the sea, everything dissipating into nothingness. If he had tried to use reaction force instead of detonating his outer shell to generate thrust, he would probably have been caught in the black mist's grasp by now.
At that moment, the massive black hand slowly retracted into the darkness enveloping the world. Then it reappeared, the writhing darkness gradually condensing into a half-humanoid form at the center of the galaxy. Its lower body remained rooted in that dark world, but the two arms of its upper body had finished condensing.
It was as if the essence of shadow had taken human form—the deepest darkness from which no light could reflect. The moment this dark humanoid condensed, it let out a long sigh.
[Not using this power to resist the Terminal Entity is truly wasteful.]
As the dark humanoid released a spiritual wave that swept across all surrounding star regions, large patches of black mist flew out from the world beneath it, circling around its sides. From this, one could see that this side of the space-time channel was undoubtedly the black mist's lair. The dark humanoid was the black mist mother entity, and the world it enveloped was the former Alpha Sanctuary!
The black mist mother entity, like Joshua, had no habit of exchanging pleasantries, conversation, or any form of delay. Without any superfluous explanation, it began its attack, entering the final battle phase.
The dark humanoid extended its massive hand, reaching for Joshua. Wherever this hand passed, all energy reactions, all light refractions, all magical fluctuations vanished without a trace. The enormous arm swept through the galaxy, leaving a gap in its wake. Nothing could escape its grasp—as it swept, it should have raised an energy tide even more magnificent than Joshua's, but in reality, everything was silent, no ripples stirred.
If it were an ordinary person, they might not even understand how the black mist accomplished this. But Joshua clearly understood that all of this was because the black mist absorbed and devoured all energy acting upon it, even reaction force—like a black hole, even more terrifying than a black hole as a natural celestial body. The dark surface was an energy-devouring structure leading to annihilation; whatever touched it would sink into hell, never to return.
As for how to deal with it, Joshua hadn't yet figured it out. So for now, he could only evade rapidly, dodging the dark humanoid's repeated grasps.
Thus, one could see at the center of the rotating energy galaxy, the massive dark humanoid silently swung its arms, sweeping across tiny stars. The stars it swept past were either swallowed in chunks, then self-decomposed into pure energy and reabsorbed into the galaxy, or produced violent explosions, lighting up supernovae within the galaxy.
But neither supernovae nor massive explosions could affect the humanoid's movements. All impacts, upon reaching the humanoid's surface, were easily absorbed, thereby eliminating any energy. The dark shadow swung its arm, attempting to catch a star flying between the darkness and the galaxy. But that star was different from the others—it rapidly jumped and turned, nimbly avoiding all of the opponent's actions.
Joshua did not use gravity. Although, unlike light, even a black hole cannot eliminate the influence of gravity, the mass difference between him and the black mist mother entity was too great at this moment. The opponent was a super-existence capable of enveloping a star, larger than a world. If he used gravitational amplification, the one affected and pulled would not be the opponent, but himself. He flew rapidly through the void, evading the humanoid's grasps.
By now, he had also discerned some clues. First, the black mist's absorption ability was different from his gravity. The black mist itself did not cause any material movement; its absorption was purely absorbing all kinetic energy, causing everything to return to stillness. This meant that the surface of the opponent's body might even be absolute zero. If not for the enormous energy brought by his initial fifteen percent light-speed impact, which the black mist could not absorb all at once, he might have been completely captured at that moment.
But this also proved that the black mist mother entity's instantaneous energy absorption had an upper limit. Moreover, the opponent was clearly protecting something, which was why it used this peculiar form to fight the warrior.
Otherwise, why would the black mist mother entity only use this highly restricted form? Energy absorption might be an invincible ability—as long as the absorption limit was not reached, all attacks, whether light-speed, explosions, shockwaves, or high heat, could not affect it. But conversely, the black mist mother entity absolutely could not release any light or heat; this was a power that could only be used for defense.
And the target of protection was also obvious. Joshua, flying rapidly, slightly turned his head to look at the massive world enveloped by black mist, located beneath the humanoid.
That was the black mist mother entity's only weakness—the suspected Alpha Sanctuary.
Although saying this was very evil, very unlike a good person, if he could attack the Alpha Sanctuary, attack the thing the opponent was protecting, then the black mist mother entity would absolutely have to protect it. By attacking the only point the opponent cared about, even the black mist, which destroyed worlds as easily as breathing, would panic and rush to defend and repair.
Thinking this, Joshua extended a finger from afar. Astonishing energy gathered in his breath, finally condensing at his fingertip into an ultra-high-density mass. Joshua unhesitatingly fired this pellet, accelerating it to one-tenth the speed of light.
In that instant, an endless sea of fire was generated in the void. Billions upon billions of explosive electromagnetic vortices dragged behind this pellet, like the massive light fog released by a comet.
Given the distance between Joshua and the black mist mother entity, the distance one-tenth light-speed needed to travel was negligible. Even with light-speed reaction, it could not be avoided.
This neutron star pellet, as heavy as a mountain range, truly hit its target. The enormous impact force was enough to break the crust and plunge straight into the planet's mantle—but it stopped in place, causing no damage. A black tentacle intercepted it, absorbed all the kinetic energy, and then retracted into the mother entity.
But this was not without effect. One could see that the massive black mist humanoid paused noticeably, allowing the silver star to escape its grasp, until it confirmed that nothing else could threaten the world beneath it before beginning to move again.
But Joshua, having confirmed that his attack was effective, had already launched a full-scale offensive.
"Mass core fully activated. Transmission system beginning linkage. Beginning material entity condensation. Beginning acceleration force application."
Joshua's humanoid form stood in the dark void, while his planetary true body floated behind the humanoid. The two were connected by visibly distorted space-time. Countless light streams accelerated to the extreme were bound in space-time grooves, serving as linked cable channels transmitting immeasurable information—now Joshua's avatar and his true body were one, indistinguishable. A vast will controlled all of this, then slowly opened its 'eye.'
Hum. The void rippled. Terrifying energy and mass converged. One could see that the surface of the perfectly circular silver giant cocoon, several hundred meters long, began to undergo violent changes, like a tightly closed eye opening. The next moment, a massive 'red pupil' devoid of any emotion or fluctuation opened behind Joshua's avatar. Countless strange red characters formed the pupil's iris—these were the unique runes of Joshua's inner world.
For ordinary civilizations, if they wanted to perform particle acceleration, they needed to design a massive ring several or tens of kilometers long to have enough space for acceleration. But if the civilization was more powerful, they would place this acceleration ring in cosmic vacuum, because normal planetary surfaces could not accommodate the massive structure of the acceleration track... Even the Demon Lord Haier Mu had to do this, transforming into a long serpentine form to satisfy the conditions for particle acceleration and condensation.
But what if someone turned an entire world into part of themselves, turning an entire world—even the space of an unformed small world—completely into a massive particle accelerator? What would happen then?
Just like Joshua.
"Beginning subluminal material stream impact."
At the center of the massive eye, red runes began to converge energy. Then, a silver-white light pillar tore through all darkness. It shot out from Joshua as its base point, like pure nothingness that destroys everything.
The scattered black mist floating around the black mist mother entity could not resist at all. Just as they attempted to counterattack, they were ignited by the light stream's residual waves. Dozens of black mist clusters burned into fireballs, dissipating into ash in the dark void. Even the strongest among them merely lasted a little longer.
Subluminal speed refers to speeds exceeding ninety percent of light speed but not yet reaching light speed. If it were pure particle beams, such as magical rays composed of various elemental particles, they could easily reach this speed. It was also the speed of most ray magic, like disintegration rays. Their lethality lay in high heat and various elemental properties. But subluminal material streams were different.
Their true body consisted of countless tiny but extremely massive high-density material particles, pushed to subluminal speeds by Joshua's immense energy. Their lethality did not lie in the properties of the elements themselves, but in pure kinetic energy sufficient to destroy all things.
The silver-white light pillar swept through the void. All darkness turned to ash. Even the space-time structure twisted under such impact, forming large patches of vortex-like distorted space. It shot unerringly toward the Alpha Sanctuary beneath the black mist mother entity. The merciless warrior did not hesitate to destroy the capital of this ancient Sanctuary civilization, just to make the black mist reveal a flaw.
[Foolish... Human.]
Faced with such terrifying impact, even the black mist mother entity could not ignore it. This silent, mysterious high-level artificial intelligence, which from beginning to end had only said a few ambiguous words besides attacking, let out a roar. Its humanoid form instantly dispersed, then reverted into a thick black vortex, blocking before Joshua's light pillar. One could see that the subluminal material stream, sufficient to scatter stellar structures, also lost its momentum before the swirling darkness. It reverted into individual silver pellets, then scattered and annihilated into basic particles.
But the black mist did not pay no price for receiving this attack. Large amounts of black particles scattered from the black mist mother entity's body. They glowed all over, flickering in the dark void like sparks beside a campfire—these were the remnants of overloaded black mist particles after complete destruction.
This was not uncommon. The black mist mother entity was no stranger to this type of attack. In the long ages past, it had fought many civilizations, many void behemoths. Among them, one or two civilizations had mastered attacks that even it found difficult to withstand—attacks that it could not receive even by constantly observing black holes and learning their form.
But this did not matter, because attack was relative. While destroying the enemy, the attacker also consumed equal energy, equal resources. And when it came to energy and resource reserves, no one could surpass it, which had reserves accumulated for centuries and plundered endless worlds.
Its barrier was indestructible.
The black mist completely blocked the silver-white light pillar. The energy galaxy was scattered by the residual waves of the clash between the two, turning into radial nebulae dispersing into the void in all directions.
And at that moment, the black mist, patiently waiting for Joshua to exhaust his reserves and stop attacking before launching its counterattack, heard a whisper.
"Sorry."
The human releasing the subluminal impact, the humanoid covered by distorted light, said softly with spiritual waves: "I'm sorry."
Sorry for what? Who was he apologizing to? The black mist mother entity did not know, nor did it need to know. It merely once again condensed a giant hand from within its body, that surging darkness, reaching from the side toward Joshua, who could not move because of his attack.
Faced with this rapidly approaching dark giant hand, Joshua's expression did not change.
"I'm sorry, you worlds that have not yet been extinguished."
He said softly. Then, the silver-white light pillar, which had already shown signs of decline, once again returned to brilliance, even more magnificent than before, unstoppable—under such radiant impact sufficient to annihilate all evil and sweep away all stellar things, the dark giant hand approaching from the side also collapsed. Its instantaneous energy absorption capacity was overwhelmed by the pure high-energy output, like a person who had drunk too much water and could no longer swallow anything.
And at that moment, in the other worlds of the dark domain.
World Two, World Three, World Four, World Five, Six, Seven, Eight—in all worlds, in all exploration teams that had not yet evacuated or left their exploration targets, a silver cylinder was called to midair by a great will. Under the astonished gazes of the teams, it rapidly expanded, then transformed into a silver light pillar, hungrily and fiercely plunging into the depths of the earth and sea.
"Unlimited material consumption permitted—initiate hyperspace energy transmission!"
One could see the barren world's earth beginning to rapidly collapse. With the area where the silver light pillar entered as the origin, a region hundreds of kilometers in radius rapidly sank, forming an abyssal black pit. This range continued to expand. Countless matter vanished without a trace, disappearing to an unknown location.
And at the center of the vast ocean world, a massive whirlpool formed. Countless enormous tornadoes appeared in the sky, pulling countless amounts of air into the whirlpool's center. Everything, even gas, could not escape the fate of being plundered. A world's balance was thus broken. Hundreds of millions of tons of seawater were decomposed into nuclear fusion fuel, then transmitted to the distant other side of space-time, to the 'stomach' of the beast named 'Joshua' that devoured stars.
—With Joshua's inner world as a relay station, the material torrent from seven worlds surged through the space-time channel, pouring into the silver giant cocoon. They transformed into the warrior's fuel, temporarily providing Joshua with nearly infinite power.
"I will hold you back until everyone arrives."
The darkness surged under the light's illumination. Even the subluminal impact stream could not shatter the black mist mother entity's defense. It was the ultimate shell that even evil gods could not destroy, an event horizon that could even devour light. The dark humanoid's face emerged on the surging black mist surface, and an angry roar rang out. It had plenty of spare power. If not for protecting the Alpha Sanctuary, it would not need to play such offensive-defensive games with Joshua. It could attack freely, swallow this damned human into its belly, absorb all energy, and then completely assimilate him.
In response, Joshua raised his right fist. Behind him, two more arms were also condensing—invisible hands representing the control of electromagnetic force and gravitational force. The four-armed humanoid stood solemnly in the void, behind it the silver giant wheel eye shining with infinite light and heat. It slowly raised its hand, injecting power vast enough to flip the crust and shatter planets.
And then, it swung forward without hesitation.
Boom—even in the silent void, such a roar seemed to come. It was the roar of shattered space-time, collected and converted by gravitational perception organs from the vibration of space-time.