Soul of Searing Steel

[Before the coming of the legendary warriors from the Empire, the battle in the forest continued on for four nights. Each night, the same event would repeat. A bright light sparked from inside the forest, followed by a heavy spreading of black smoke. A burst of magic followed by a large crack in the earth. The same event continued until the fourth night, when the resisting soldiers had finally reached their limits. Curious about what they were actually fighting, they decided to send out a few strong ones to enter the crack and to uncover the truth.

Out of all the defending soldiers, only four were chosen. When all of the monsters were killed, the four selected soldiers crawled their way into the crack. It was a revelation. Something that was otherworldly, the crack in the earth, which was suspected to be a doorway to the monster’s lair, was a portal. It was a stable dimensional portal that was formed naturally. It seems that the portal could appear at any two worlds that had magic. Any powerful disruption of magic would cause a crack in the dimension, thus allowing the formation of a doorway that bridges two or more worlds.

Knowing the truth of the portal, the four soldiers went across it and came to a deserted wasteland. There were countless monsters, filling the land from the portal till the end of the horizon. The moment the four soldiers stepped onto the land, the monsters immediately sensed them and started to attack the strange aliens from another world.

The four selected soldiers were the strongest amongst the resistance. Hence, they were strong. So strong that the monsters could come in massive waves but they did not falter. Come rain and shine, they would never yield.

They had spent more than several hours killing the monsters that came to them. After processing all the monsters’ droppings, one of them had accidentally found a huge monolith that was left behind from a superior, wiped out civilization.

The monolith had writings carved on it, of which, none of the soldiers could understand. However, something magical happened. The soldiers could not read but only stare at the monolith to understand what was the message was. It was a story. A tale of how an entire civilization went extinct.

The content of the message was:

The civilization that lived in this world, strived to succeed through powerful alchemy skills and magic tools. Their mastery of the two aspects was strong enough to allow them to engage in trading with other worlds. Thousands of dimensional airships had flown in the airspace of other worlds, allowing the people of the world to trade across multiple worlds with ease. However, there was one unfortunate incident that occurred while they had traveled to an unknown world. An unknown monster had landed and attacked the carrier.

Even though it took some time and effort, the crew members aboard the airship was able to defeat the monster, not realizing that one of the crew members was planted with a parasite.

On the day the airship returned to their homeworld, bringing in goods and items from the other world to theirs, one monster had spawned out of the infected crew member and attacked everyone present then. The magic tool that the crew member had could not deal any damage to the monster. Unfortunately, this particular civilization did not have any strong soldiers in the first place. There were only people that were highly efficient in using magic tools. Hence, when that single monster was killed, there were only five men left on the airship.

They thought that everything had ended with the monster’s death, as they were to document the monster to let everyone know about the dangerous monsters from another world. The problem was, things did not end there. There was more than one airship traveling around the world that was attacked. In truth, there were more than several ships that had been attacked and countless crew members had been infected with the monster’s parasite. When the ships had returned to their homeworld, those parasites grew at exponential speed and burst out of their host and started to kill anyone that was around them.

It was the start of the true terror that reduced the civilization to ashes. Despair spread across the land like a plague. What was once a peaceful civilization, was invaded by chaos and evil monsters from another world.

In less than half a year’s time, the powerful attacks of the monster, coupled with the terrifying speed and means of spawning, the monster had managed to eliminate all that once stood as tall as the clouds. All construction and proof of a great prosperous civilization were erased. The survivors were sent into hiding to many castles that had stood the test of time. Monsters came in large groups to attack the castles, trying their best to force out the survivors and to devour them.

They lived in constant fear, worry, and despair. Not long after, the emotion of dread turned into something aggressive. They were no longer afraid. Instead, they were angry. The hatred they bore for the monsters were so great, that they had given the monsters a name. Aragami. The raging gods.

No sooner, the survivors started to fight back and from the ashes of their initial defeat, they had risen to resist. The battle between the survivors of that world and the Aragami grew long. Once the survivors had fully analyzed the enemies’ weakness, they had started to form a large group of people to start a large-scale counterattack.

Among the survivors were genius alchemists. They had used their powerful technologies that enabled them to travel across universes, and the materials left behind when the monsters had been killed, to create a new type of arsenal. The weapon was made by combining a sealed energy core and one part of the user’s body (1) to create an inscribed charm, to form an attachment to the weapon. Through the meticulous implementation of complicated magic circles in the weapon, the powers contained in the materials that were dropped from the monsters once they were killed, could be transferred to the user, allowing them to gain strength and vitality that rivaled the Aragami. As such, even a normal non-combatant could be a professional Aragami slayer just by wielding the weapon. (2) With the power in hand, the initial few soldiers were able to slay the Aragami easily without any casualties. Although it was slow, the progress chart rose exponentially. The more they killed, the more material they could salvage, more weapons could be made, allowing more soldiers to join the fight. That was the birth of the first Divine Armament.

Victory was almost theirs. The survivors that were once hiding in the old castle had given up sulking in a corner and came out to slay the Aragami with their weapon in hand.

Just when victory was so close, the real winner of the war was still not decided.

One fateful day, when the sun was covered in black clouds, making it look like night had been there the entire time, a sudden distortion in space appeared in the high sky. The air got cold and no sooner, breathing was difficult as every breath they took, it felt like thousands of microscopic swords pierced their lungs from the inside. All the survivors looked to the skies and the cold wind froze even the ocean itself. The black smoke concentrated in the sky, along with the gray mist and rain cloud. The sky started to crack and the world itself was being torn apart. The numbers of Aragami that came pouring out of the distortion of space was indescribable with numbers.

An unnamed, unidentified monster, the Evil God, the dimensional demon, had arrived.

The powers granted to the soldiers who wielded the weapon, originated from the deceased monsters. However, the first crafter made fatal mistake to think that the power came from the monsters itself. Without will or conscience, the weapons were unable to resist the call from the beasts. All the survivors were turned back to mere mortals in that instant.

When the last of the Aragami that rained down the sky and swallowed everything that existed, the last to survive…those that cared of preserving the knowledge had decided to pass on the information on this monolith. Here lies the history and the means to create such a weapon.]

“…” Joshua puts the letter down and rubbed his temples after reading such an intense letter. He walked to the window and opened it. He needed to pause for a minute, he needed the cold winter wind to help him relax his troubled mind.

The content of the letter… the event… was rather familiar.

In the fourth expansion of Continental War, the abyss was opened, the demons’ descent, the coming of evil, the spreading of chaos… all that… was without a doubt was the same setting of the game and the world that he was in. It was not something that he had looked forward to. Even though the civilization of the game was not able to reach the point where humans were able to cruise across dimensions like airships across the continents, Joshua’s current world would not be able to handle such a threat. Even though there were many gods protecting the realm, they had their own fair share of civil wars. If the dimensional demons were to attack this realm, the gods will put aside their conflict and fight the invaders side by side.

The civilization mentioned in the letter was rather unfortunate to be the one that discovered an undefeatable adversary. The world that was destroyed by the monsters had better technology than all of Mycroft Continent combined. If they wished to invade, Joshua could put all his money on the civilization of the other world. However, although they had better technology, the Aragami that emerged out of the Dark Forest was suppressed by the Empire’s soldiers. That alone had proved that different civilization progress had led to a different outcome. One aimed for peace and expansion, while the other sought for power and domination.

As for the dimensional demon, that was beyond Joshua’s knowledge. In the game, there was a small group of oracles who were known as the fallen gods, that had the potential of legendary tier. However, as for the strength of those dimensional beings, be it the dimensional demon or other beings that roamed the space between dimensions, they were surely beyond [God] level powers, or perhaps even higher than that.

Joshua could not stop thinking and decided to return to the letter.

[The four selected powerful soldiers that went through the portal and arrived in the other world. One of them was your ancestor. They were the ancestors of the Vlads, the Scarlets, the dwarven Ironborns, and the Radcliffes. Together, they had decided to put exploring the unknown world on hold and instead move the monolith back to this world. Once the Empire received the news of the other worlds, they constructed a teleportation circle and sent over a group of mages.

Under the guidance of the legendary mage, Carbala Kaos applied a strong seal onto the crack in the earth, the portal that spawned the Aragami. However, the problem with the portal was the unknown power that drove the dimensional portal. Nonetheless, it was strong. Perhaps, even stronger than the abyss. It was feared by all that the sealing magic applied to the crack was not able to fully close the portal. It was speculated that if there was a burst in magic, causing disruption in the air, the portal would break open once more and the rise of the Aragami would once more plunge this world into darkness. Even though a large number of them will be stuck in the portal, there would be stronger Aragami who could push their way through to reach this world.

To stop the disaster that befell the other world, and to better slay the monsters known as daemons, or Aragami, the four chosen ones, with the legendary mage Carbala, they had decided to forge the weapon that was described on the monolith.

Translator’s Note:

(1): One part of the user’s body: The author did not explain which part of the user was taken. It could be even an organ, or a bone, or even the soul of the user. It is extremely vague.

—Explained in the next chapter.

(2): Weapon: The author did not describe the weapon. It is unclear whether or not the weapon mention in this chapter is in the form of a sword.