Chapter 36: World Stripping
Year 838 of the Falling Stars Era, November 9th, Mycroft World Northern Standard Time, 6:57 PM.
A low, whimpering cold wind swept across the frozen surface of World One. It stirred up black-gray metallic dust, forming an ice tide at minus 112 degrees Celsius, rolling mightily across the broken planet's surface.
This was an extreme within extremes, an ice prison where even air solidified. Here, even a fire dragon born from magma would freeze into ice, every trace of heat drained from it in the lightless darkness.
But on this cold, dim planet surface with not a shred of light, three figures were slowly pacing through the gale. They trod upon layers of ice harder than steel, standing atop a ten-thousand-meter peak formed by crustal movement.
Joshua and Saint Israel stood atop the planet's highest peak, gazing down at this world that had been completely ravaged. The massive, crisscrossing chasms on the ground, the planet's crust exposed to the outer atmosphere—every trace bore witness to a brutal battle that had once occurred here.
Even the peak beneath their feet was shaped by the terrifying gravitational disturbances caused by a warrior activating a Neutron Star Battle Body in ages past.
Behind them, a young man in a heavy, bulky protective suit struggled to keep pace. He was Priest, the captain of the Elite Squad. This young man followed his mentor, taking difficult steps, striving not to be left behind. But when he too stood atop the planet's highest peak, Joshua and Israel were no longer looking at the ground. They raised their heads, gazing at the dim rainbow ring high in the sky.
More than half a year had passed since the battle with the Black Mist Mother Entity. As time went on, even the planet's core had rapidly cooled amidst the abnormal energy fluctuations. World One, which had once spewed high-temperature metal weapons, had now become a frozen wasteland, its former wonders gone.
The exploration teams had been successful. Aside from two members of the First Squad who died in an accidental encounter with the Black Mist, no one had faced danger or died from their own mistakes. Even the deceased Knight and Cleric had their souls completely collected by the Soul Abyss Orb, and Joshua personally resurrected them perfectly.
Of course, resurrection was not without cost. If death resulted from one's own mistake, even if resurrected, the deceased member would be disqualified from exploration and dismissed from the Imperial Foreign Exploration Department. However, the First Squad was simply unlucky to encounter the Black Mist, an irresistible natural disaster. So Joshua did not make them pay any price, only ordering them to restart training and adapt to their new bodies.
Now, the Knight was engaged in an unimaginably long swim in a water-rich world, tasked with circumnavigating the world with his own body. The Cleric was to set up fourteen exploration nodes on an ice world to collect environmental data on that frigid planet.
Though it sounded difficult, it was actually excellent training for Transcendents. Joshua believed that with their experience of death and rebirth, the two would soon advance to Gold-rank.
As for Priest, he had volunteered to follow Joshua to World One for training.
Because of the overload defense using the Steel Force inheritance left by Joshua when facing the Black Mist, the young warrior had gained a deeper understanding of gravity manipulation between life and death. After receiving Joshua's full teachings again, Priest had grasped a hint of the mysteries of gravity and spacetime. That was why he came to World One, where the core was shattered and gravity was extremely strange, for training.
"The seals imposed by the gods are very firm, with no signs of error."
Standing atop the peak, looking up at the sky, the Holy Light in the old Pope's eyes gradually faded, becoming ordinary eyes. He lowered his head and sighed. "But this operation was extremely difficult, even for the gods, it was a tremendous drain."
After reinforcing the multi-dimensional seal on the Black Mist Mother Entity, the nine deities returned one by one to their temples or sanctuaries around the world for a long period of rest. The maintenance of the array was entrusted to major forces, primarily the Church of the Seven Gods.
As for the common people on the Mycroft Continent, they knew nothing of this grand battle, still living increasingly comfortable lives. At most, the Dwarf merchant guilds and nobles with mineral veins in their territories were puzzled by the continuously falling metal prices—the alloy sand mines in World Three had begun production, flooding the market with large quantities of low-cost, high-quality raw materials, undoubtedly impacting the previously near-monopolized metal resource market.
But these were just scattered minor matters. Whether it was Israel's intention to establish Di Mo Er as Crown Prince, causing a huge stir in the Empire's upper echelons, or Duke Roland of the Western Mountain donning his crown and allying with the underground races to prepare for a conquest campaign against surrounding kingdoms, all were but mist under the sun before truly important news, vanishing in an instant.
And that important news was the whereabouts of the Grand Database.
When the gods opened the spacetime gate and began transferring the Black Mist Mother Entity's immense mass bit by bit into the event horizon of the black hole in World One, they accidentally—or rather, as expected—discovered the spacetime signal of the Unified Grand Database near the black hole. Through the joint efforts of several Legendary figures led by Nostradamus, working with the gods, they successfully 'pulled' the Grand Database, which had been trapped in the black hole's accretion disk, out.
In fact, when Joshua first entered World One and saw the black hole, he had already detected traces of the Grand Database's existence through gravitational wave spectroscopy. But at that time, he was anxious to protect the Elite Squad members and needed to quickly summon many Legendary figures to eliminate the Black Mist and its Mother Entity, so he had no time for detailed analysis.
But after sealing the Black Mist Mother Entity, everyone finally had time to rescue the Grand Database, which had been trapped in the black hole's accretion disk for a thousand years... The environment of the Grand Database's guardians also confirmed the earlier suspicions of the old Pope and Joshua: why could the Grand Database, which clearly had the most advanced spacetime signal transmitters of the Radiant Era, only faintly send out a few signals by luck? Why could they only see pitch black when there should have been faint starlight even in the lightless dark domain?
The answer was simple: they were right next to a black hole. Naturally, it was very difficult to send out any signals, and no light could be seen. The material particles they had obtained earlier were probably just remnants of the Black Mist.
The rescue of the Grand Database was a major event for the entire Mycroft civilization. But when the major forces joined forces to open the gate to the Database's dimension, preparing to reunite with their compatriots from a thousand years ago, everyone was stunned to discover that the Grand Database's guardians had lost their normal life forms. They had become fragile humanoid beings unable to sense light, unable to eat solid food, and extremely afraid of environments exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.
They had human forms, but were almost no longer human. They lived in symbiosis with a strange fungal algae, able to autotrophically produce various necessary life substances in a lightless environment. But the price was that their bodies were covered in cysts and neuromas. Countless bizarre, even highly toxic microorganisms had infiltrated their life systems, causing non-lethal but extremely painful mutations.
The overly extreme living conditions and scarce sources of energy and matter had forced the Database's guardians to drastically transform their bodies. The earliest ancestors of the guardians had turned themselves into this low-energy-consumption form, allowing this branch of humanity to survive.
But even so, these guardians knew nothing of human culture and civilization. Apart from guarding the Database according to ancient rules, they could do almost nothing and knew almost nothing. Yet it was precisely because of these human guardians, who were barely human anymore, that the Unified Grand Database's data storage was preserved in a relatively complete state.
Nature Mentor, Baniel, William, and others were conducting a triple-linked treatment of body, mind, and soul for these worthy guardians. A team was working around them on trauma recovery, trying as much as possible to turn these guardians back into normal humans who could enter human society. This was the most important joint operation of major forces in recent years, not for destruction, but for salvation.
"In fact, according to my calculations, the reason World One's star went supernova and became a black hole was very likely caused by the Grand Database colliding with this world, creating a massive spacetime oscillation phenomenon."
Joshua also stopped looking at the black hole high in the sky. He lowered his head, gazing at the devastated World One. This world might have once been a vibrant, living planet, but now, it had first turned into a high-temperature hell for centuries, then become this frozen wasteland, wiping away all traces of its beautiful past.
"This spacetime shockwave likely swept through all the worlds around the Dark Domain, even triggering solar eruptions in many worlds... The Ice World and the Mineral World probably lost their suns because of this."
After speaking, Joshua fell silent, but his mind couldn't help recalling the memories from the spiritual fragments of the Eye Demon Lord, Haier Mu.
It was a living planet destroyed by a supernova explosion. The entire star system was extinguished by the radiation storm kicked up by the nearby solar eruption. Even the planet itself was knocked out of its orbit, plunging into the expanding star and burning to ashes.
That supernova explosion over four hundred years ago was likely the final aftershock of that spacetime quake. Haier Mu, who happened to be teleporting through the void at the time, was caught in a spacetime rift by the aftershock and witnessed this event firsthand.
"In a sense, this was all the fault of the Radiant Civilization... or rather, the fault of our ancestors..."
The old Pope beside Joshua closed his eyes slightly, then opened them again. He sighed heavily once more. "So many suns extinguished, civilizations destroyed... If not for the Sage and our ancestors opening the Myriad Realms Gate, perhaps none of this would have happened."
There would have been no Abyss invasion, no Evil God patrols. Naturally, the World Star River would not have been bitten into a massive wound by the Evil Gods, and the Void Great Maelstrom would not have formed. Countless races could have lived happily and comfortably in their home worlds, looking forward to the future of their civilizations.
"The Radiant Civilization, under endless light, also had shadows... Our ancestors forged the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, but it attracted the Abyss and countless Evil Gods, destroying everything around us... It could almost be said that the source of all disasters is us."
Perhaps the Black Mist Mother Entity was right. The Sage and the others had truly erred, erred in their arrogance. They should not have so rashly explored the mysteries of the multiverse's spacetime, but waited for the right time... Thinking this, the old Pope couldn't help but feel a trace of confusion. He smiled bitterly, not knowing what to say.
When would the right time come? Should they just do nothing? When a civilization reached this point, it couldn't just stop on a whim.
Who could have known that opening the Myriad Realms Gate would connect to the endless Abyss? Countless previous experiments had gone without a hitch. It was only at the official launch that it triggered the resonance of countless Abysses. This was less a coincidence and more a vicious joke, a deadly conspiracy!
But no amount of speculation was useful. The Radiant Era had vanished a thousand years ago. The Era of Falling Stars stood on its remains, looking out at the myriad realms—a World Star River scarred, with little civilization left, almost completely destroyed.
In this Star River, the Chaos left by the Evil Gods invaded all realms, devouring the flesh of civilizations. The Black Mist spread, strangling one race after another in the name of mission. The Abyss, its flames extinguished, eyed every intact world with greed, caring nothing for future or hope, only for 'existence.'
And such a scene could not possibly be limited to this World Star River alone. Similar tragedies occurred everywhere in the endless void. The sorrowful cycle of Chaos and Order never stopped. This was the current state of the entire multiverse illuminated by the First Flame.
Extremely dim, with a sliver of light, but only a sliver.
Joshua said nothing to the old Pope's lament. He listened silently to this kind old man's sighs, and when the last trace of the sigh faded into the wind, swallowed by the cold tide, he spoke calmly: "It's about time to start."
"Indeed, it's time to get down to business."
Hearing Joshua's words, Israel exhaled a breath. The light mist dissipated in the dim world. He nodded, then looked up again at the dark rainbow in the sky, and at the massive spacetime rift beside the rainbow.
This time, Joshua and Israel had joined forces to come to World One, not for a walk or to lead students. These two, who could almost be said to be the highest powerhouses of the Mycroft world, were here to accomplish an extremely important goal.
The other side of the spacetime rift connected to the main body of the multi-dimensional array. There, the Black Mist Mother Entity, its activity suppressed, was constantly having its entropy and mass stripped away and thrown into the black hole.
And the purpose of Joshua and Israel's operation was right here.
They were going to strip the Alpha Sanctuary World from within the Black Mist Mother Entity's body.