Chapter 43: World Guardian 7400
The vast "other world" stretched its body within the world, unfurling amidst the chaotic temporal storms. What emerged from the cocoon threads was a colossal cosmic space with a diameter of sixty astronomical units.
In the pitch-black space, there was not a single star's light, only the turbulent energy radiation left behind by the evaporation of countless miniature black holes. At the edges of this space, one could see the Starry World and this other space clashing violently, like a poorly composited photo where the cut-and-paste didn't align, like oil and water refusing to mix. It pressed against this other space, trying to expel it from its body.
But everyone knew this was only temporary. The Starry World, as the origin place of the original Creator, was so vast and accommodating that it was almost inconceivable. It had fully contained Joshua himself, so there was no reason it couldn't accept a mere sixty astronomical unit other space. Soon, as the edges of the other space trembled continuously, breaking and reforming space, the boundary between the two worlds—once so distinct—began to blur rapidly. It seemed that before long, the Ultimate Sublimation Aggregate would be able to forcibly take root within the Starry World through this "mycelium" it had anchored.
"Don't stop! Keep going!"
But Joshua and the Triple Veil clearly had no intention of letting the enemy achieve its goal so smoothly. They knew that now was the best time to stop the Ultimate Sublimation Body's actions. After unleashing their power to intercept and dodge the cluster of miniature black holes that had been reflected back at them, the two paused for not a moment before launching another rapid assault.
The ability to reflect an enemy's attack was unreasonable, but for Joshua, who had seen countless bizarre abilities in the world of transcendents, it was not something he couldn't accept. Moreover, rather than worrying about the enemy returning attacks and holding back, letting them achieve their goal, it was better to go all out and test the limits of this reflection ability!
That said, it required some clever thinking. As two dazzling beams of light flared in the cosmic vacuum, Joshua and the Triple Veil began their attack. But this time, they didn't choose conventional cosmic attacks like black holes or supernova explosions. Instead, they cautiously opted for another method.
At the center of the black hole engine, where spacetime was extremely distorted, one, then two black dots rose from it. Soon, three, four, hundreds, thousands—in an instant, tens of millions of dark, non-luminous black dots emerged from all parts of Joshua's body. The smallest of these was close to the size of the Moon, while the largest could rival a star. Regardless of size, these dots exhibited a strange state: they emitted no light, reflected no waves, and gave no feedback or reaction to the outside world.
Then, the power of the Triple Veil descended. He covered these particles with a thin psychic barrier, and together with Joshua, shot them out.
—"Famine Force."
It was nothing strange. These bizarre black dots were the power once held by the Plague Evil God of Famine, whom Joshua had destroyed. Joshua simulated the power the Evil God had intended to unleash at its final explosion—the creation of "True Absolute Zero"—forcibly draining all energy from a portion of spacetime, freezing all particle and wave motion to approach absolute zero. At the same time, the Triple Veil sealed them, isolating them from external contact, and then launched them with precisely the right amount of force.
Spacetime drained of all energy looked much like a black hole, and indeed, it was quite similar. True absolute zero could devour all matter as energy, with an infinite potential to absorb from the outside, yet it released absolutely nothing. In a sense, if it could be maintained, it would be even more terrifying than a black hole, far more convenient for destroying worlds.
Then, these pseudo-absolute-zero dark points—capable of easily destroying worlds with their warped spacetime—were projected and plunged into the limit space. As they crossed the violent conflict line between the two worlds, these "bombs" lost their fragile psychic shielding. In an instant, these tens of millions of dark points, enough to freeze billions of miles, were detonated one after another.
One could see at the boundary of the limit space, countless nebular materials frozen by near-absolute-zero temperatures formed a frost-white, magnificent ice river, large enough for planets to roll upon. Though this river quickly melted and vaporized in the high-temperature radiation from the earlier miniature black hole explosions, it turned into thick white mist, occupying a portion of the limit space.
The area controlled by the limit space shrank significantly—the Starry World had pressed it back a part.
But this time, no attack was reflected.
Of course, though no attack was reflected, the limit space still launched its own assault. Seeming somewhat pained, it began to condense miniature black holes within its space, identical to Joshua's, and fired them at the two. But this attack posed no threat to Joshua and the others, who had intended to stop and test, then evade. They dodged it easily.
"Just as I thought."
Amidst the evasion, Joshua nodded seriously, communicating with the Triple Veil. "This limit space hasn't yet connected to its main body outside the void. It has infinite energy, but it can only unleash a limited amount. It has to rely on our own attack power to defend and attack us. This way, as long as we don't use attacks with massive energy that it can 'dominate,' but instead drain and consume its energy, we might be able to inflict effective damage."
Even when facing a theoretically invincible enemy, one must not give up lightly.
[Warning: Be careful next.]
The Triple Veil responded.
[Plan: This time, let me attack. Lord Radcliffe, you assist and block its attacks for me.]
The limit space, or the Ultimate Sublimation Aggregate, was an enemy so powerful that even the Triple Veil was shaken. It was completely different from the civilizations and life it had observed over tens of millions of years, born from the void outside the world, life nurtured by other worlds. The Life Preservation Program felt both excited and cautious, eager to expel this enemy attempting to invade its world and equally eager to obtain more data on it.
"Leave it to me."
The warrior promised.
And at that moment, the limit space began its counterattack.
In the pitch-black other space, void creation unfolded at the speed of thought. Vast, solar-system-scale runic arrays were constructed and solidified in space. Between the runes, intense light flickered and leaped, as if a hundred suns had simultaneously risen in that region.
Where this light passed, inconspicuous shadows began to emerge in the void.
But only ordinary people, inexperienced in battle, would be fooled by the dazzling light and runes. Joshua could see at a glance that compared to the runic array, which only gathered the energy of a few stars, those spreading shadows were likely the main attack. The silver world expanded and contracted, and the massive spatial distortion warped spacetime coordinates, shattering the light and shadows around it into fragments.
As expected, in those distorted, shattered spaces, from a shadowy area likely left by the nebula from the previous battle, a dark cocoon thread made entirely of shadow suddenly extended, as if trying to grab the silver Steel Force mist Joshua had spread through space.
At this moment, Joshua was not in human form. His four-armed giant form was for dealing with enemies ranging from planetary to stellar size, solar-system-level and above, while his human form was for enemies below planetary level. Now, his silver world, the Black Hole Engine in its complete state, was for galactic-level warfare—annihilation, suppression, and cleansing operations against galaxies. At this state, his entire being was the core silver world, surrounded by Steel Force mist, with four black hole engines controlled by gravity. If needed, he could add more plugins and modules.
Though one black hole had been destroyed earlier, it had been repaired using a star transmitted by the Triple Veil as raw material.
"You want to do something? I won't let you."
Joshua didn't know why that black tendril wanted to grab a clearly non-essential part of his Steel Force weapon. But thinking it over, it was likely trying to "touch" him to forcibly teleport him into the other space, or to erode and devour him, or some such attack. In any case, he wouldn't let it succeed.
And without a doubt, this attack was based on the latest transcendent power, "Shadow Force." Neither Joshua nor Mycroft had fully studied this power, but the Ultimate Sublimation Aggregate had already mastered it. The warrior naturally wouldn't use shadow against shadow—that would be self-defeating. But he recalled his earlier speculation about the context of transcendent powers and immediately had a countermeasure.
That was Holy Light.
In front of the silver world, a cosmic-scale lightning bolt exploded. As cyan light burst like a shattered star, a "super-giant Azure Orb," half the size of an Earth-like planet, appeared before the "forehead" of Joshua's silver world—if that area could be called a forehead. Centered on the Azure Orb, the one he was most familiar with, he began to mobilize Holy Light, forcibly activating Holy Light power on an unimaginable scale.
The black cosmic space was instantly illuminated by cyan light. A colossal cyan vortex formed around Joshua, and a cyan-gold Holy Light ring spun around him, spreading outward from the vortex's center.
Squeak—crack—
Like acid meeting alkali, black meeting white, under the Holy Light's radiance, the shadow space hidden in the darkness was forced to reveal itself. It was an other-dimensional space overlapping normal space, dwelling in shadows, distantly connected to the limit space. Joshua's guess was correct: it intended to "touch" him to directly attempt to control and dominate him. And because of its unique life form, shadow space as a transcendent power was a perfect fit for it.
And not only that. One could see within the shadow space, deep purple, almost black lightning crisscrossing. Countless huge, gray, dim crystals stacked upon each other, forming an incredibly complex array. It seemed to possess a powerful annihilation ability, canceling out all positive matter in the entire space, turning it into nothing.
And at that moment, while Joshua was clashing with the limit space, the Triple Veil's attack prelude was complete.
In the distance, the Evil God's minions, which had mostly dispersed but whose source Evil God hadn't been fully destroyed, suddenly let out a collective agonized howl and then vanished into nothing, as their indescribable, ineffable connection to the Evil God was severed. At the same time, an intensely powerful psychic reaction erupted, accompanied by a blinding light strong enough to scorch the surface of distant planets. The next instant, with the flow of energy particles from the psychic autonomous leap spreading across the stars, the limit space, sixty astronomical units in radius, was forcibly shaken out of its fusion process with the Starry World.
One could see that not only the limit space, but a larger area of cosmic space centered on it was locked down and isolated. Within this region, the world lost all color. Multicolored stars turned into pure white, while everything else became pure black. In this bizarre black-and-white space, only Joshua's silver Steel Force and red divine patterns, along with the Triple Veil's silver-blue psychic glow, could be seen.
[Report: Reality rewrite port is running at full power. I have completely locked down all space within a radius of 1,176 light-minutes and isolated it from the outside. This way, the limit space will need to expend dozens of times the effort to erode, and after it finishes, I can directly cancel this locked space, forcing it to start over from scratch in eroding the Starry World.]
The Triple Veil's tone showed no fatigue, as it had no concept of fatigue. But Joshua could sense that its thinking speed had significantly slowed, indicating that this locked space was consuming a large amount of its resources.
[Union: The Second Veil must maintain this port's operation, and I have lost the tri-unified authority and power. But this way, it cannot use our power to attack us.]
"Good, but faster."
Joshua said. "Use whatever means you have. I'll hold it off."
The brief exchange lasted only an instant, because the imprisoned limit space, seemingly angered and obstructed, erupted with even greater power.
The twisted other space, forced to change shape by the dozens of times greater pressure, compressed and pushed back from all sides, let out an angry roar. One could see it was no longer that pitch-black other space but more like a formless light mist emitting a faint white glow. Countless hazy, minuscule threads, bubbles, and dust particles flickered in and out of this light mist. Around it, one could also see many hidden runic arrays, forced to reveal their true forms due to spatial compression, like densely packed gears.
Its initial state was an incredibly tough cocoon thread that feared nothing except the singularity of a black hole, not even spatial tears. After unfolding, it became an absolute dominion space that could arbitrarily control all energy and matter within, regardless of their source. The transition between the two was nearly invincible, and both forms protected the core runic array well.
But during the transition, it exposed this one weakness. At this moment, Joshua could clearly see the hidden core of this limit space. Spatial compression had forced it to partially revert its form, locking it between the "initial" and "expanded" states—in other words, it had been forced to reveal its true form.
At the very center of these things, the most protected part of the runic array, was a tiny but extremely bright white dot. An infinite, indifferent malice emanated from it.
Joshua didn't need to think to know what it was.
It was the port connecting to the main body of the Ultimate Sublimation Aggregate, the origin point it used to control and erode the Starry World.
—Can see the enemy's vital point.
—Confirm core target.
—Confirm own power.
—Simulate enemy's possible defenses and counterattacks.
—Total of 377 attack plans confirmed.
—Begin to condense, prepare.
"Hah—"
He took a deep breath, a human instinct Joshua deliberately retained. Through this ritual of "breathing," the ultimate transcendent powerhouse began to enter his complete attack state.
The massive world began to endlessly absorb energy from the surrounding universe, like a vortex siphoning, a tornado sweeping, like the Void Great Maelstrom or the Genesis Maelstrom, drawing all things around into itself, then "dominating."
—The Devourer of Heaven and Earth begins to breathe.
So the surrounding stars went out. Hundreds or thousands of stars transmitted by the Triple Veil went out one after another, like candles and lanterns blown out by wind in a room. Space began to distort, compressed by abnormal gravity, clinging to the silver world. Light, forced along paths twisted by both gravity and space, had to wind and slither like a snake, constantly writhing. Energy became more and more concentrated, more and more immense, until finally—
The silver world was "ignited." Violent energy flames burned in the most intense way. Even around the black hole engine, spectacular light accretion disks and jets appeared, beautiful and magnificent.
Then, he began to advance through spacetime.
—"Anyone can dominate," anyone would say. Every transcendent is a master of dominating themselves and all things. After all, if you can't even control yourself, how can you talk about moving forward?
Don't mistake the basics for the means.
"Let's try. Will you dominate me, or will I destroy you?"
Silver light turned into lightning-like intense light, but everything around was utterly silent. Even mechanical wave energy was restrained. Even in the nebula layer, there was no sound. Joshua warped space, charging through the dark cosmic vacuum. The silver world and the black everything presented a stark contrast.
Shining Spark, like a burning galaxy advancing, terrifying yet glorious and magnificent. But this seemingly majestic strike brought no aftermath, because all energy was restrained and concentrated, like pseudo-absolute zero, only absorbing from outside, not releasing. Only some passively manifested flames of transcendent power adorned it.
And at that moment, the Triple Veil received Joshua's delayed message.
"This limit space will definitely resist me. It will use itself as bait to lure me into attacking. Then, in the midst of the confrontation, when I cannot fully control my own power, it will use my power to open a larger passage to the Eternal Void Anchor, sacrificing this space of its own to summon a larger limit space invasion."
"For transcendent beings at our level, for anything known, we can always find a way to counter or escape. There is absolutely nothing that cannot be solved forever. So, to truly harm the enemy, we need the 'unknown.'"
The Triple Veil understood Joshua's meaning. That was exactly what he was doing now.
And everything happened just as Joshua had predicted. The shining galaxy collided with the constantly compressed other space.
In an extremely short time, with immense energy and overwhelming dominance, even the Ultimate Sublimation Aggregate could not instantly dominate the destruction and energy brought by the collision of an entire world plus eight black holes. There were no existing adjectives to describe the high temperature and pressure that created multiple light explosions capable of shattering worlds in an instant. But these explosions in turn spawned the energy and spacetime distortions gathered on the outer layer of the silver world, spawning twisted spacetime where even light didn't know where to go.
But even such an attack did not completely destroy the core of the limit space at the first moment. Far more runic arrays than all the runes ever drawn by humans, or even all civilizations in a galaxy combined, frantically blocked before the impacting world and black holes, as if at no cost. They blocked, wore down, transferred, exploded, twisted, using countless methods and nearly infinite energy to obstruct.
But it was all useless. Under the absolute crushing of energy levels, the limit space, with a total radius of only sixty astronomical units, had no spare power to attack or dominate. Even with infinite reserves, the work it could do per unit time was always limited.
In the instant before being completely crushed by the onrushing black hole, the limit space used its last power. It completely dominated all the overflowing energy except Joshua's main body, turning it into a thing made entirely of light, like a snake or a dragon. In the moment before self was stuffed into the black hole and completely ground down by the singularity, it controlled this energy long snake to dive toward the core area of the contradictory spiral.
No one could stop it. Even Joshua was in a moment of blurred consciousness from the backlash.
So it smoothly plunged into the Eternal Void Anchor... and then, using this power enough to pierce spacetime, it coordinated from within and without to open a larger door.
In that instant, one could see, at the center of the black-and-white spacetime wheel, the contradictory spiral, another cocoon thread broke through. Then two, three, dozens, hundreds.
A single cocoon thread had forced Joshua and the Triple Veil to fight seriously. Now, they multiplied like fungus, proliferating rapidly.
Was it a moment of despair?
Of course not.
"Triple Veil!"
In the shattered, unhealed spacetime, Joshua almost roared his ally's name: "Hurry!"
[Full Activation: Removing spacetime interference, artificially activating World Will, granting highest authority to the mission, installing psychic network, confirming leap system installation... Beginning zero-lag superluminal information transmission.]
Due to excessive computation, the Triple Veil's emotionless voice appeared in the warrior's ears.
[Activate: Guard! Observe! Foresee! We are one—Initiate, Starry World Complete Autonomous Defense Device, Star Sea Serpent!]
Drip.
Inside the world, on the supreme throne.
Three drops of silver-blue water fell, plunging into a brilliant star sea phantom, producing a grand, echoing, extremely deep water sound. Then everything returned to calm.
But then, the miniature star sea began to tremble. Ripples appeared. It shook, like the prelude to an earthquake and tsunami. And then, a roar.
Boom—the miniature star sea was shattered. An incredibly massive serpent, large enough to easily hold a galaxy in its embrace, burst forth, hanging high above the dome. One could see three silver-blue water drops falling onto its head, naturally splashing up to form a crown. At the same time, a dense silver-blue network began to spread across the serpent's body. It expanded at the speed of thought, spreading, penetrating every corner from its head to its tail, which pierced the sky.
—Thought was unprecedentedly smooth. Everything was reflected in the mind. Ah, was this the feeling of thinking? Was this the feeling of being awake? Was this the feeling of not needing to wait thousands of years to sense a wave from a planet, not needing to spend hundreds of thousands of years to shift perspective from one galaxy to another?
The Star Serpent's eyes were bright. It sensed something vast dwelling above it, an existence far more ancient than itself, born before the concept of "World Will" was even conceived. It was this existence that brought the psychic network, descended upon it, unlocked all its bindings and constraints, returned its true power to it, and gave it an awake will it could never have had otherwise.
In that instant, all psychic energy users in the Starry World felt a void in their hearts, as if something extremely vast had left them, no longer with them. The protector that gave them a sense of security, guarded their souls, and prevented psychic users from going mad due to overly sensitive perception disturbed by external information, had left them.
To better protect them.
[Agenda: Cooperate to expel the external enemy.]
"With pleasure."
In the material world, cocoon threads were dancing wildly. A part of the Ultimate Sublimation Aggregate's body, after breaking into this world, began to unfold rapidly. This time, it would rely on absolute energy levels to wipe out all obstacles in its path. Otherwise, no matter how much time was spent, it would be futile.
They were about to succeed.
Until a roar, enough to make all things in the universe tremble, sounded from inside the world.
Spacetime—twisted. An unimaginable force descended.
In a daze, all scenes shifted. After the twisted light and colors, the cocoon threads still at the Eternal Void Anchor, in the contradictory spiral, found they hadn't been attacked.
Just that their position was no longer where it had been.
Rumble... A roar starting at 300 decibels sounded. Material flows at over a billion degrees roared and blew. In the observable region, everything was light, rivers of fusion. Even the prototype of stars were being generated within. The ultra-high pressure even turned much matter into degenerate states. Everything was the most extreme temperature and the most extreme environment.
—It realized where this was.
The silver world then descended. At the same time, a grand, unpredictable will, whose source and end were unknowable, also descended.
—It understood.
This was.
The Dark Galaxy, the edge of the Silver Heart Great Black Hole.
It was in the accretion disk of this black hole.