Soul of Searing Steel

The bodies of Evil Gods contained the memories and souls which their former world and civilization carried in life. To a certain extent, their existence itself was a perpetuation of that devastated world—all information, history and past was hence carried in its form, becoming its power.

And now, the unknown Evil God extended its voice.

If there was anything stirs a sense of helpless in people, it was the laments and sobs of those alive in the face of their civilization’s inevitable destruction. They could do nothing to save their world, and so all heroes and banners fall before the end, and as the heavens fall, none could shoulder the blue yonder ever more.

Therefore, there was only sighs.

Something that could leave humans even more helpless was the fall of two civilizations…

Or perhaps three, four, ten, a hundred.

Or perhaps countless civilizations.

And now, Joshua was listening to the weeping of near countless worlds.

The voice of Evil Gods could not be heard by any humans. Like the existence of the Steel Python, one who had not reached the level of Legends do not even have the right to peer into their existence. Even the warrior would not have been able to done so without the Authority of the King of Searing Soul if he was a normal soul searer or a mere mortal—if that was the case, before he gained Steel Vision as a Legend, he would never be able to see any Steel Python.

And yet, at this very moment, that supremely powerful perception had instead held back Joshua’s resistance.

Within moments, the warrior who was enshrouded in Chaos heard the simultaneous cries of countless perished worlds.

He felt that his consciousness was slowly sinking into a vast Chaos. The unknown Evil God—or he should say, the remains of countless perished worlds which awakening was interrupted and core was destroyed thus instinctively attempted to corrupt and assimilate the silver world.

Boundless memories surged into him.

Joshua hence saw the recollection of those that lived in the eve of their worlds dying.

Dark flames blazed over corpses, with dull shadows extended with despair towards the distance.

***

The sun was covered by the black smoke from burning cities and the skies immeasurably dull. When the ‘Taboo’-class—the greatest alchemist arts had been used without restraint, the entire world was on the verge of destruction.

Cities and mountains were reduced to ashes through disintegration magic and blown sky-high by hellfire beams. In the war the alchemists waged to claim the power to rule the world, the very distribution of matter in the world was altered as rifts split over the world’s surface. As massive enchanted machinery extracted fires from the planet’s core, attacking the floating cities that wafted in smog and acid rain, while titans that stood higher than mountains flung the earth’s crust and mountaintops at each other, creating tremors that destroyed the enemy encampments.

Lives were a number, populations were resources. The alchemists who believed themselves to grasp Truth and never seen their mortal counterparts as their own kind also never paid attention to their survival, nor were they concerned about the wanton destruction of their own world. They believed that the victors would restore all damage done, and even if all ordinary beings were extinct, cloning was their way to remolding a brand-new and beautiful world.

Because they believed themselves to hold the power for healing everything, the war between the alchemists had lost every sort of moderation: they would create toxic gases, spread plagues or shatter moons to create meteor showers. The madder ones even intended to detonate the world’s core itself while they hid in the vacuum beyond the skies, hence destroying all of their opponents.

However, they underestimated their own madness, just as they overestimated the world’s endurance.

In the eve of their world’s fall, the flames at the planet’s core were dying while the world’s cycles were hence snuffed. The World Barrier began to shatter, but it was too late when the alchemists realized the fact. Even with the power and skill to restore their world, they did not have the time.

In that dark age and a world that was on the verge of its own end, in the wreck of a remote city near the poles, a young boy and a girl whose right leg was amputated snuggled up to each other before a dying bonfire. They were not related to each other in any way—the boy was simply a wanderer who lost his parents, while the girl was orphaned by war.

They were unaware that the world was about to die and what kind of last-second struggle the alchemists were attempting. All they knew was that winter was coming, that they have no food and no wood to burn and reignite their little fire. Be that as it may, the boy made his choice: he left what food he had to the girl, while himself headed to the most dangerous warzone to scrap any remaining resources.

It was extremely dangerous and an assured death, for the battlefield of Alchemist did not accommodate mortals. However, they were left without any choice, and death was a matter of time.

The two knew that their coming farewell was eternal.

Thus, they cried in each other’s arms in the final night before they bade each other farewell—it was neither despair nor the fear of death, but mere misery. Their world was simply so cold that not even those two lonely souls are allowed to lean on each other.

The only thing that could be worth rejoicing was that the world completely shattered before they parted.

All things were hence reclaimed by darkness.

***

In a world without supernatural powers where the massive world government that controlled the world, the last war of unification had been the last fires of war that the civilization had—there was only perpetual peace since then.

The world’s technology was not advanced but it could already alter the world and secure near limitless resources for civilization. Everything from skies, seas, land, economics to entertainment, information and work, all was within the control of the central government—and that even includes every person’s birth, growth, friendships, marriage, childbirth, job, and death.

The world was even altered into several zones: agriculture for producing food, mining sectors for resources, industrial zones, and towns where the bulk of populations were assigned to live. The four different regions would work on their respective tasks, with most citizens never once seeing another zone for life.

None would find that unsettling since that was the education they head since a meager each. After all, wherever each individual lived, they would still enjoy friendship, kinship, entertainment, and leisure. The central government would not interfere with any individual’s life if unnecessary, and the people were actually given the right to enjoy their holidays or live in other zones. Still, it was not needed since they did not understand and hence did not like or were curious.

It was nothing other than a strict order, but essentially was not wrong.

Then, the day came along that their brain tank predicted that their exceedingly small world could only simultaneously sustain 55 billion even with their best measures.

And their population would reach that number in a dozen years.

To prolong—or it should be said, to avoid the moment when the world burst from overpopulation, the central government implemented a widespread population control policy: densely inhabited areas were prohibited from having children, while a lighter prohibition was placed on other zones.

Through medicine, artificial sterilization, advocacy of the disadvantage for childbirth and segmentation of residential areas by gender. Having gender specific populations allowed the central government to succeeded in controlling their population growth, causing the rate of increase that had been rising on a seventy-degree angle to plummet. With their authority over the fundamental levels, they had even prevented newborns in the year they plan was implemented.

The management was successful, perhaps excessively so… to the point that they could not control it.

After almost ten years, as their population decreased to the safety critical point, the central government decided to temporarily stop the population control and restore childbirth activity. However, even the most flawless plans would have a loophole due to their executors—the central government had calculated that even the childbirth of elderly to decrease, and did not account for unprecedented individuals who could not procreate normally. Though they had already predicted many aspects of the issue, they never imagined that the exceedingly successful population control had turned every individual to share an instinctive aversion and disgust for childbirth.

It was no joyful thing in the first place—be it taking care of infants, grooming them or for the female form to gestate, not to mention that it was difficult and extracted a great toll with basically no reward at all. If not for habit and norm for the government to arrange for blind dates when individuals matured, most would not go for it if not for the advocacy.

Then, as the tendency of society shifted, the central government that believed themselves capable of controlling everything realized that their population control had gone awry, with everything too late and the number of newborns falling to a dangerous threshold.

Even with government incentive, distributing hormones as well as developing various medicine that heightens euphoria and lowers birthing pains, the rate of population growth could not be increased. As the elderly perished in droves and the newborns that were just a fraction of the previous generation matured, society collapsed even before anyone realized that they sorely needed to procreate.

Then, as the older generation withered, the world fell into silence.

Hive-like mega factories that towered over mountains were left unmanned without workers, while mega industries that needed thirty thousand workers to maintain could not work. Production lines that needed over thousands of transporters to move raw materials from mining zones for three continuous days had developed flaws as well since they could not work on full capacity—not to mention that there were no technicians in sight.

Crops grew wildly over the vast agricultural plains, and it was empty where hundreds of farmers worked their huge harvesters over the fields. Those food were no longer harvested, and left to rot in the ground—so what if it was harvested? The factories for primary and secondary food processing had all ceased operations since the clear task division left the farmers who only had to work by harvesting and growing crops unable to move their crops.

The once crowded cities were now ghost towns, with no living soul visible even over seven to eight streets, although anyone would vary if the other person was hostile if they did—resources were limited in such metropolises without industry and agriculture fueling them, and there were not much stores of daily consumables in such megacities. In this age, full stomachs aside, even survival was a huge problem.

Populations were the cornerstone of civilization, their fundamental production units. Nothing exists without population.

Within decades, the raw fuel in the large industry bases was leaking due to lack of human maintenance, exploding violently as it reacted to the ozone. Even more energy source installations were developing various issues given the same lack of maintenance as well, with leakage, explosions, and radiations polluting the entire world.

In a few more decades, one terrible volcanic eruption quickly destroyed the ruins of a metropolis, just as the sun shifted its orbit and brought forth a small ice age.

Another few more decades, and the last individual that embodied civilization perished.

The old person who had grown up and lived alone, watching the world would sit in his wooden hut and stare blankly at the portrait of its parents. They had only a single child due to the radiation pollution, and had always cautioned that it must find an individual of opposing gender to sustain their race, but it could not find anyone apart from parents.

Before death came calling, it began to cry—not because of the fated arrival of old age and death but due to sadness, the lack of warmth and indescribable desolation.

Amidst absolute silence, the lifeless world slowly trod toward ruin.

***

Worlds that fell from war, or policies.

Worlds that fell from natural disasters, or climate change.

Worlds that fell from technological progress, or reaching a bottleneck.

Joshua’s spirit descended into Chaos as he witnessed the sights of worlds and civilizations falling to ruin. He could hear the cries of misery, one after another.

The tears of civilization did not flow from fear and destruction, and their misery was in all that was not absolute.

They clearly had greater and better possibilities and beautiful futures, and yet in those critical junctures, they stepped upon their final path that appeared narrow but was actually necessary.