Soul of Searing Steel

Starfall Year 831, 21st of December. 11 a.m.

That was the time where the Dark Tide attacked the fortress of Moldova for the third week. The blizzard might have subsided, yet there was still a very dim view surrounding the fortress even during the afternoon.

Deep at the center of the Dark Forest, there laid a spot where the cold wind and a very dense amount of magical energy could be found. From this location, the sun rays were not able to pierce through the forest as if a thick coating of darkness covered the land. The only light that could only be seen was when the daemons fought each other, and during their collision between each attack, provided a small glimpse of light within this complete darkness.

Nonetheless, due to the death of three Gold-tier daemons, the situation was not as critical as before. With the death of the corrupted dragon and frost butterfly, there was no longer condensed black mist and chaotic blizzard covering the land. All the remaining daemons were not a great threat towards the fortress. Even the flying-type daemons were mostly annihilated by the group of mages in the fortress.

The remaining land-based daemons could only try to kill each other for food, due to the lack of leadership after the Gold-tier daemon perished. They could not bring forth any threat to the fortress.

There were only a few scattered Aragami that would still bring forth some pressure and problems to the fortress.

In the heart of the Dark Forest, Joshua swung his sword while traveling at high speed and shattered the flying-type Aragami into pieces. At the same time, the atmosphere void of light devoured the remains of this dragonfly-like Aragami.

“Strange… There is not that much Aragami as I thought.”

With heavy killing intent, Joshua’s movements could no longer be traced by ordinary humans’ eyesight. He could now travel a few hundred meters within seconds, leaving behind his afterimage only. The young warrior used not more than ten seconds to reach the location where the beam of black light was situated.

Meanwhile, he was communicating with his Divine Armament.

“Ying, can you sense how many Aragami there are within the vicinity?”

“There are a few only. Master, this situation is weird. Although the Chaos energy is extremely strong, there were not more than 5000 Aragami being summoned to this realm…”

Ying doubted herself for a while and said, “I am not sure if my detection mechanism has malfunctioned. This is the only number of Aragami I could detect.”

Although Ying was now in the form of a weapon, she still had the detection rune which was engraved upon her to use to detect the overall environment, especially Aragami activity within her vicinity. The dimensional rift had already been activated three times. Under normal circumstances, there should be more than ten thousand Aragami breaching this dimension.

However, the current scenario was different from the normal occurrences. The number of enemies she detected was not even up to half of the Aragami in the past.

Without any change in expression, the Joshua who was covered with blood and slight wounds said, “Without sending any small trash to invade us, who knows that if they would send in the big guys after us.”

“Big… guy?” The Divine Armament asked curiously. Joshua could not give her a solid answer at the moment. He was thinking about another issue.

The Evil God from the void was an existence that was feared in his previous life. Even during the fourth expansion of Continental War, there was not a lot of information about it.

The Distorted Void was the same large dimension as compared to the Space Void and Bottomless Dark Abyss. According to the rumors in the past, the Evil God’s power was way stronger than the boss within the Dark Abyss. The Evil God was the manipulator behind the scenes, the strongest among villains. Even Joshua, who was the only Perfect Legendary-tier warrior; his level and capability could only match against the King of the Dark Abyss and the Demon Lord. He was still not capable to go against the Evil God and the Great Daemon of Dark Abyss.

Now, he only had the capability of a Gold-tier, yet he had to interfere with the invasion of the Evil God.

If the warrior could not settle this issue, the entire northern region including Moldova and his homeland would be destroyed.

Based on the information of his previous life, Moldavia was not destroyed. The Radcliffe family’s quest for the Divine Armament was introduced during the third expansion of the game. If Joshua did not assist in the invasion of Moldova, the tragedy would have probably not occurred as well. The only downside would be the Scarlet family suffering a major loss. After all, if the strong folk within the Empire felt the emergence of new dimension gate, they would be the first to provide aid to stop this tragedy.

Although those people could be relied on, putting your fate in the hands of others seemed like a silly thing to do. A warrior with the will and strength to fight would never think about that as an option to live.

To solve this matter now, it was all up to Joshua.

 Zoom!

Joshua looked at the dark beam within the Dark Forest. Then, he looked around the forest, as if he was searching for something.

Brandon was supposed to be here somewhere.

Joshua had already known right from the start that there was a person behind him which was following him closely. When he was fighting against the dracospider, he had confirmed that it was indeed the case. Even during the time he was descending from the sky after the battle against the black dragon, he could vaguely see a green dot which kept moving forward towards the dimensional gate.

Without a doubt, the aura that was released from the green dot was Brandon himself. When Joshua was destroying both Gold-tier daemons, this swordsman also assisted in killing the frost butterfly to stop the blizzard.

Now, Brandon was trying to achieve the same goal, which was to destroy the dimensional rift right in front of him.

“RRAARRRR!!!”

Daemons and Aragami on the ground were howling together as a group. At this very moment, a piercing sound could be heard. This sound was so strong, that it was able to waver a person’s heart, causing fear and discomfort.

The beam of dark light which had pierced through the cloud fluctuated. The bottom part of the beam released a large amount of dark mist.

Hearing the loud piercing noise together with the energy which was contained within, Joshua body immediately reacted and prepared for battle even though he was not perturbed by the chaos energy from within. Joshua frowned and looked towards the vast sky. An eerie feeling that was released from the beam of light caused Joshua to feel very uncomfortable. Joshua then slowed down to examine the situation.

After controlling this unpleasant feeling, Joshua took out his silver greatsword and slowly approached the beam of light. The chaos energy from the source of trouble had rejected the power of order from Joshua’s body. However, Joshua unleashed his Combat Aura and continued to move forward.

After a while, he had reached the bottom part of the beam of light. Joshua then focused and examined the particular phenomena.

“What the heck is this?!”

With a sharp vision and the attributes of the [Chaos Guardian], it allowed Joshua to see through the chaos energy and unveil the truth behind it. However, what he saw was something that brought a chill down his spine.

There was a huge shadow from behind with a very strong magical energy. It was a monster as huge as a hill. With the help of the beam of light, it was slowly traversing to this dimension.

There were no weak Aragami. As for regular fully grown Aragami, there wasn’t a single Aragami which was at the level of Gold-tier in the first place. What lay behind this attack was a monster with a huge horn and a pair of bone wings on its back. The monster was covered with numerous eyes and tentacles. This gigantic monster had an aura greater than Silver or Gold tier. Its power had probably reached the tier of [Supreme]!

Supreme tier!

Before the Dark Tide existed in the Mycroft Continent, reaching the lands of Continental War, Supreme was the term to define the strongest person! Within the entire northern Empire, only the emperor had this strength. The other mages of the royal court normally would only reach Perfect Supreme. With the power of Supreme, it was capable to become the ruler of a certain land.

“Hmm… that big beast is coming.”

Joshua muttered and smiled, “Ying, look. This was the big guy that I mentioned previously.”

The ongoing plot was just too familiar to Joshua. During the days where Joshua battled against the daemons from the Dark Abyss, they often met with scenarios where small fry were only sent as fodder. When the attack mattered, the enemy would send a strong boss to turn the tide of battle.

The only difference in this situation was, the big guy that was sent was just a ‘little bit’ too strong.

“…”

Was that something that she and her master could defend against?

Of course, that was impossible!

Although Joshua was confident, he was not stupid. There was no way for the Intermediate Gold-tier to be able to defeat a superior Aragami, which was a few ranks greater than him. Only the dumb would think that Joshua could deal with it. These people would probably unable to survive even the first episode.

“This is definitely going to be a headache.”

The warrior was currently floating in mid-air, observing the situation and trying to think of a counter-measure to it.

If the beast was sent towards the realm, it would be an apocalypse. However, they were still not at the stage of despair yet. The greater Aragami was still on its way. Within that period, it could not retaliate. Thus, if Joshua could destroy the gateway in time, the big guy over on the other side could only scramble back to its own world.

As for destroying dimensional rift… Sad to say, it was Joshua’s forte!

Just as the warrior finished his own observation on the dimensional rift, a green light flew from the depths of the Dark Forest towards Joshua.