Soul of Searing Steel

Boom!

The earth was shaking.

In the quiet world, suddenly, a loud explosive sound resonated through the land.

Right in the middle of a ruined city that was shrouded in thick fog, there was something moving around. Partially hidden, its body was so massive that it looked like a mountain. It looked like it was trapping and gathering some sort of power from the surroundings.

As it passed by, the rock piles were turned into dust. The high mountains were leveled down to the ground. The ‘power of existence’ was sucked in by that gigantic monster, causing the world itself to start shaking.

Along with the crystal clear sound of glass breaking, everything around it had become blurry and further away as if everything would just no longer exist on the next moment.

—Fire…

Feeling faint and confused, Ying suddenly heard a voice.

…Fire!

That voice was echoing back and forth between the heaven and the earth of that world as if it was looking forward to something, as if it was craving for something.

So what does ‘fire’ mean?

The lady asked herself doubtfully.

—Naturally, it referred to the spark of the world. The first light that ever came into existence since the beginning of the world. Only ‘fire’, and the one and only ‘fire’ could light up the void entirely and banish all Chaos…

Boom! Another loud explosion came. The lady’s instincts could feel it. The master of that voice seemed to be ready to answer her doubts and questions. However, having no idea what the reason was, the voice was interrupted by some sort of influence or power. The explosive sounds would just suddenly burst out of nowhere and shatter the voice away from getting to Ying. After that, Ying could not hear anything else.

Along with the sudden thunderous sounds, enormously fierce waves of Chaos swept across the land one wave after another. Ying felt overwhelmed and had difficulty breathing each time the wave of Chaos came at her. She could feel her soul gasping for air. However, a silver-white radiance suddenly emanated. Some sort of strange power that felt gentle had boosted the Will of the Divine Armament. It acted like a shield that repelled Chaos’ power, banishing any trace of it that tried to approach Ying.

As time passed, the waves began to calm down. Meanwhile, the shield had also vanished. Upon lifting her head up, Ying could only look at her surroundings like she was lost. She looked at the sky that had not even the slightest sense of light.

Just now, she could feel that there was a great Will attempting to look after her. It was a gentle force.

[Remnants of fire, the descendants of steel. The creations of my people… It not yet the promised time, you should not be here.]

A booming voice echoed in Ying’s heart. At the same time, a strange force repelled the soul of the little lady, causing it to rise, and rise towards the location where the dimmed radiance of the sun was.

[Return now, just return now. Hold down to the promised day, then you shall come back to fulfill your destiny.]

In the end, right before she left that world, Ying had no idea what just happened. However, she felt reluctant to leave the place. Right before she left, she was sure that she heard a prayer.

[—May the sun forever bless your soul.]

After that, the silver-white radiance emanated. A wave of force pushed over her from the direction where the radiance was emanating now. After the trance, the silver-haired little girl opened her eyes and found herself back in the real world once again.

She woke up.

“What’s wrong? Are you awake now? Did you sleep comfortably well?”

The little lady sat herself up right after she woke up from her dream. Her eyes looked dazed. She seemed like she had not completely woken up yet. Her hair was a little messy at the moment. Some strands of hair had gotten into her mouth- so, after Ying heard the voice of her master with no clue of what was going on, she immediately shuddered and got up on her feet. Then she apologized in a hurry, “Sorry, Master. I have no idea why I felt so tired back then…”

After that, I dreamt about something… strange. What did I dream of just now?

“Well, Divine Armaments shouldn’t need to sleep, so why…”

Softly biting her lip, the Divine Armament wrinkled her forehead a little. Then she muttered to herself looking troubled, “For Divine Armaments, we do have a state called ‘hibernation’. That state is different from sleeping.”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to react so much to it. Sleep is for us to adjust our memories, a ritual to purify our souls. Even the vampires that do not require sleep would sleep for hundreds of years according to their needs.”

Joshua looked at the silver-haired girl who was muttering to herself with a face filled with doubts. Then he noticed that Ying was actually kind of cute when she did that. He could not help to laugh, “No matter what, next time when you want to sleep, just tell me. I’m not a bad person. I wouldn’t let you yawn just to follow me around, right?”

Upon saying that, the warrior suddenly noticed that ever since he had become a Gold tier, he had not slept at all. For so long, every time he noticed that he was tired, he would just close his eyes for a two-hour nap before he completely recovered.

To get such high-tier battles and training, normal people would have collapsed. Meanwhile, the Divine Armament had been tagging along all the while. She was always there every single time… From that point of view, Joshua could not help but feel guilty. He had not realized that he was behaving like a black-hearted count who loved to bully and force a little girl to go beyond her limits.

Although Ying had been reminding him her age was as same as his, who would care about that?! The warrior was a person that believed only what he saw with his own eyes.

The silver-haired lady was still frowning as she recalled her past memories. She could still vaguely remember that she had seen some strange phenomena in her dream. Although she was feeling all blurry and dizzy while she was in her dream, however, she could still recall something from it.

“So what was it…”

Standing near the sofa, she began to walk back and forth as she was trying hard to recall. However, no matter how hard she tried, she could only retrieve fragments of her dream: gray mists, a world slow on time, everything covered in rock crystallized substance, the Chaos waves and the gigantic creature that lurked along with the waves… Although it sounded like there was a lot of content, however, even if Ying could just connect it all, she could not get anymore out of that dream.

“The feeling was the same as the feeling last time when we were on the wall. It was just like the memory fragments that I saw through Master’s Will. Although it felt like I’ve seen a lot of things, I can just remember a little bit of it actually… Could it be that I had been connected to some sort of great and powerful existence without my knowledge?”

Thinking quietly to herself, Ying was strangely confused. She could not fathom her current situation, “But I can share Master’s memory because I’m his Divine Armament. So how could I be connected with some other existence then?”

“Huh?”

Just when she was troubled with that thought, the silver-haired lady heard the slightly excited voice of her own Master. “The dwarves… they want to give me a set of armor?”

Joshua was sitting by his study table. He was holding a dark gray letter in his hand. He was looking at the content of the letter while showing a slight interest in it, “And the armor set is being forged by the leader of the dwarves himself, Ironborn Moreila?! So does that mean I’m getting a set of Legendary-tier armor for free then? Does that mean they are really going to give it to me that just like that?”

Anyway, that was only one of the few good news there were these days. The warrior could not help to nod his head a little. Before this, he was looking at the other letters. The contents of those other letters had also confirmed that everything about the incident over the Empire that Alphonso mentioned in his letter was true. However, this sudden good news had changed his mood entirely in an instant. He felt much happier at the moment.

The dwarves had their own language and grammatical rules but also knew the language that humans use. It was still alright if they only used the language for daily conversations. However, if they were required to write the language in official formats or documents, it would surely be as hard as breaking through the sky.

It took a while of great effort before Joshua managed to look through all of the letters he received earlier. A large portion of the letter was meaningless greetings. The main point emphasized in the letter was congratulating the warrior on obtaining the title as the new count of the territory, acquiring his ‘qualification’. Joshua believed that the ‘qualification’ was actually the process of acquiring and forming a pact with a Divine Armament. So according to the promise back in time, they would forge a set of armor that was the best. Then the armor would be given to him without any condition. If there was a chance, they would even send a messenger to visit him. Then the messenger would inform the date for him to go and collect his armor.

“The dwarves’ armor must be the best among the best. I’ve been waiting for this a long time ago.”

Upon putting the letters in hand down, Joshua looked at the ceiling of the study room. He had an eager look on his face. “Normal armor is already too weak for a person of my level. During the battle with the black dragon and the dracospider, even if I wore better magically enhanced armor, the armor would not have held on for much longer. Basically, the armor would be completely destroyed in a couple of minutes… This is a timely assistance, just like fuel delivered to me in the snow.”

In the weapons category, there was the Divine Armaments. In the category of armor, there were these legendary equipment that were forged by the dwarves. So Joshua felt that even in the previous life, he had not had the chance to enjoy so luxuriously before.

Time passed very quickly. At that time, right in the study room of the mansion, the black-haired warrior was visualizing the future. At the same time, the silver-haired girl was still feeling troubled by her own dream. The room was quiet as no one was talking.

Knock knock knock.

Suddenly, a series of rapid knocks on the door broke the silence in the room.