Chapter 44: Erosion
An unparalleled light and shockwave, akin to a supernova explosion, descended upon the entire sealed world!
The surging power of order tore apart the chaotic planet's body at an inconceivable speed. The scorching silver light, at the cost of its own annihilation, rapidly neutralized and eroded the dim chaotic power. One could see that on the decaying evil god's planetary body, the originally enveloped September had its surface layer of chaotic aura beginning to dissipate and disintegrate.
One could see that deep within it, there were ancient and decayed warship wrecks. Those eerie and twisted tentacles and appendages all extended from the broken windows and valves of these warships, then swelled to resemble a planet.
The entire chaotic planet was shattered by three-quarters of its mass from this super explosion. The crust, upper mantle, lower mantle, and even part of the core were blasted away. The originally frenzied and greedy evil god's power, which sought to erode the world, was now completely beaten back to its original form, nearly imperceptible.
One could see that at the residual core of the planet, there was a constantly rotating, geometrically wired spherical metal cage, flowing with runic light... This was likely the original form of the evil god's seal, and also the prototype of the entire sealed planet. However, this sealing array was almost completely decayed. Its originally silver main structure had now completely turned into a rust-like black-red.
And at this moment, Joshua, who had retained only his core mass, was half-kneeling on this metal mesh spherical seal. The warrior closed his eyes and frowned, adjusting and adapting to this weakened body that had abandoned a large number of transcendent organs.
The peripheral, irrelevant chaotic power had been swept away by him in conjunction with the mass self-destruction triggered by the decay fluctuation. The power that the decay evil god had accumulated over these thousands of years was also estimated to have been blasted clean by him in a suicidal momentum. Hah, decaying degenerate matter into ordinary normal matter particles? That was too conventional. Joshua simply added his own force when the evil god was decaying him, directly converting eighty percent of his body's mass into an ultra-high-temperature plasma cloud!
Ultra-dense degenerate matter, converted into a rapidly expanding plasma cloud—in terms of instantaneous lethality, it was hard to say which was stronger. One must know that a star in the cosmic void is merely a point of light. But if it explodes and expands, turning into a nebula diffused among the stars, it can even envelop an immensely vast domain. When such an explosive process is simultaneously driven by both the warrior and the evil god, the power increases geometrically!
As for the lost mass, consider it weight loss—no loss, no loss.
Moreover, precisely because of this self-destruction, which cleared all the accumulated chaotic power on the entire planet, Joshua, through the massive stellar core sealing array before him and the warship wrecks wrapped within September, roughly understood the thoughts of those legendary figures who sealed the evil god thousands of years ago.
Although it seemed that because the seal they constructed was too crude, it was naturally decayed and eroded by the decay evil god over thousands of years, leading to the current situation of the evil god's revival.
But in reality, these legendary sealers of the evil god never considered thousands of years later.
Yes, whether from the choice of materials for the sealing array or its construction, it was very obvious that the sealers back then had no intention of building a semi-permanent stellar sealing array. Instead, they temporarily used a circle of wire mesh to isolate the sleeping evil god that had been beaten into slumber. They never thought about what would happen thousands of years later if no reinforcements arrived!
At that time, the Sage and these nine legendary figures should have jointly conducted an experiment concerning chaos conversion. They indeed discovered that by using the power of the decay evil god as a source, other chaos could be reduced back to primordial steel force. Gaining inspiration, the Sage, preparing to return to the Mycroft World to save the Steel Serpent Mycroft, went back directly. The nine legendary figures should have only been responsible for temporarily guarding the main body of this decay evil god.
But what awaited the nine legendary figures was thousands of years of silence and an extremely distorted space-time expansion effect.
The nine legendary figures could not leave this sealed world. They were jailers, guarding the evil god, sealing chaos, and were also guarded by the evil god, sealed by chaos. Once they left this world, the decay evil god, which had just been sealed and still retained a great deal of power, might awaken directly... But the seal they designed back then would definitely not last more than fifteen hundred years.
In the long years, the nine legendary figures were gradually influenced by the evil god's power, then fell into slumber one by one, turning into nine solidified seal anchors in the sky, mechanically coordinating and suppressing.
If there were still no reinforcements after fifteen hundred years, it meant that the Mycroft civilization had long been destroyed. Whether the evil god revived or not was none of their concern; this was not within the sealers' consideration. But if there were reinforcements, no matter how weak or feeble, as long as one among them held the power of order, the nine hubs and the warships could coordinate everything, even awaken the nine sleeping legendary figures, and suppress the evil god for another one to two thousand years.
And one to two thousand years would be enough for a civilization to grow to the point of inheriting the legacy of the Radiant Civilization.
The nine legendary powerhouses and the Sage of that time had thought it through thoroughly.
But they did not anticipate that there would be such a thing as time dilation... And once it dilated, isolating the two worlds would be five thousand years.
This was a power stronger than any seal.
But now, Joshua, who had clearly destroyed almost all of the decay evil god's living force, looked solemnly at the main body of the evil god, writhing and formless, within the spherical seal.
"Trouble... So this is where the Sage found the inspiration for creating the Grandia World."
He murmured softly, his tone heavy. The situation was indeed much more troublesome than Joshua had imagined. "And I roughly understand why the evil god could accumulate power and break through the seal."
The warrior looked down at the main body of the evil god, gloomy and twisted, behind the seal.
One could see that within the endless, deep, and dark mist, countless points of light emitting different glows were flickering.
Those were the souls of life—the souls of orderly life!
Since the nine legendary figures led the fleet to suppress the evil god and established the planetary seal, the fleet members had multiplied, lived, fought, and survived on this planet. Along with various racial colonists who had arrived here due to navigation errors caused by the time dilation effect over the millennia, countless lives had multiplied, been born, and died on this planet.
But this world was not a true world; it was an artificial sealed world. Naturally, it would not give birth to a true Steel Serpent, nor would there be any cycle of souls. All dead souls would follow this secretly writhing chaotic tide, returning to the main body of the evil god at the planet's core!
However, this did not mean the complete annihilation of the souls!
Because under the exquisite design of the nine legendary figures and the Sage, what was being eroded was, instead, the sealed decay evil god!
Using orderly souls to reversely erode the evil god, like blood flukes parasitizing a human body, these souls, parasitizing deep within the sleeping evil god's main body, had been gradually weakening the evil god's chaotic essence over the past thousands of years. Not only did they not die because of the evil god, but they achieved immortality because of it! If, during the normal duration of the seal, the evil god was completely ground away, these souls would undoubtedly be reincarnated into newborns with extremely strong talents, bringing a surge of fresh blood to the post-war desolate Mycroft World!
The Grandia World might be a product similar to this seal design. But because it was, after all, a prison for punishing traitors, the souls of the dead did not grow with the world's growth; instead, they were like amber solidified in resin, eventually becoming nourishment for the Mycroft World.
But this grand conception miscalculated one step.
That was the long wait, far longer than anyone had imagined.
At this moment, Joshua did not know the exact time difference between this sealed world at the edge of the World Star River and the Mycroft World. But based solely on what the Great Khan said—a gap of at least twelve thousand years, or even tens of thousands of years, with the outside star river—the world here had at least a difference of over four thousand years... At the very least, four thousand years. All exquisite designs would go wrong. Greatness would turn into disaster. The human souls, originally meant to weaken the decay evil god, had been eroded into a breeding ground for new chaos.
Joshua stood on the seal, staring at the evil god's main body. He could see that the countless soul lights flickering at the edge of chaos were still healthy, not yet eroded by the decay evil god. But this was only temporary. As long as the awakened evil god wished, it could infect all souls at any time. The reason it hadn't eroded them now might simply be that this evil god hadn't fully awakened yet.
And it was about to awaken—or rather, it had already awakened, just momentarily stunned by Joshua's blow.
Their souls still existed, but they were already the spoils of chaos. If one wanted to kill the evil god, it would undoubtedly implicate these souls. No one could guarantee their safety while fighting chaos.
But Joshua was, after all, Joshua. Even with complex emotions churning in his heart, unable to determine what consequences his choice would bring.
He quickly made a decision and soon resolved himself.
Whoosh—the sound of howling wind rose above the shattered star core.
Power was gathering. The energy transition phenomenon caused by high-energy convergence generated bolts of light and lightning around the warrior's four arms. The boundary between matter and energy was rapidly blurring. One could see the Steel Giant burning his remaining mass, converting it into a planet-destroying strike capable of shattering stars.
Joshua had never thought of saving everyone. Compared to the already dead souls, he valued the living more.
But at this very moment.
Just when everyone thought that the decay evil god had temporarily lost its resistance, its chaotic fluctuation suddenly surged from near zero to an inconceivable level!
And the next instant, just as Joshua, sensing the shift, was about to abandon all remaining sympathy and punch the entire star core to pieces, the main body of the decay evil god, which had been slowly writhing and rotating, seemingly like a dead object, suddenly burst apart! It felt similar to when Joshua had self-destructed his own mass earlier, clearing the accumulated chaotic aura in the entire world. It seemed the evil god had also learned this trick and was now applying it on the spot!
Boom! Darkness spread at the speed of thought. No one was spared—neither Joshua, the September warship, the floating Nature Mentor at the edge of the world, the Aklafa Hub, nor the Great Khan's soul.
In an instant, the aura of chaos filled the entire world and the void.