Soul of Searing Steel

The giant axe that cut through the Abyss swung down, and like a bright cosmos it parted the dark Void. Inexhaustive silver light exploded, splitting the Dark Star and the gushing Chaos tides behind it in two.

Blinding silver light extended over the equal gap along the trail of the cut. Unfathomable scarlet veins surged, drawing the memories of numberless world fragments in the Chaos, while the runes from the silver whirled like gears and poured like a waterfall—unfurling boundlessly in the darkness and carrying near infinite tales.

In the split second that the radiance illuminated the Abyss, every residual power of the Evil God of Death stagnated.

Unborn but growing, the Embryo of the Evil God of Death had its umbilical cord that was the Nether River severed, while its early form was jointly broken by the Seven Gods and Joshua. Most of its power was reduced into tides of Chaos that were blocked by the Seven Gods’ vigilant seals, while the entity itself bet on its last remaining strength to seize the warrior and use him as its core for revival.

Now, however, that final struggle was doomed to fail.

The giant axe that cut through stars descended, and the Evil God of Death was hence utterly defeated on the eve of its birth, meeting its own end.

Thus, at the center of the Darkest Abyss, the broken silver Giant God stood upon the Void, the single source of light encircled by endless gloom.

His four arms were vaporized, while the mass behind him left ragged—by disassembling his own mass and convert it into energy, Joshua forged the first ever luminous giant axe with electromagnetism, a weapon tailored against the Evil God of Death that embodied the power of draining memories from world fragments. By shattering the recollections in the Evil God’s core, Chaos was merely Chaos, a simple natural phenomenon like the Void itself. Destroying the core made things dramatically easier, just like how easy it was crushing natural grains of sand and soil than it was to crush concrete.

Thus, silver light began to spread from Joshua towards all of the Darkest Abyss, a giant multilayered net that reaches out without stopping. The Chaos that the net touches would not be as solid as it had been before, turning sparse and fragile like a sandcastle, utterly crumbling as the tides of light shoved it.

With the despair and sorrow as worlds ended and the power that had gathered Chaos into a single form drained, they followed the giant net of Steel Strength and gathered towards the light at the center.

In other words, Joshua.

***

To triumph against a foe, one did not have to completely crush the other—taking away that which pillared them would leave them falling apart without a fight.

Joshua, whose four arms had been turned into dust due to his control of excessive power had a serene expression. The Giant God of Steel stood amidst limitless light, the mass behind his back whirling despite shattered, gathering Steel Particles imbued with data to briefly gather as a cushion.

Be that as it may, Joshua still had to simultaneously accept the memories from thousands of destroyed worlds. It was an information transmission that could crush ordinary beings, but it would at most make the warrior grown.

The support of divinity allowed Joshua to largely ignore spiritual damage and counter everything with his most perfect form.

With every single passing moment, the world inside the Giant God’s body had thousands of beams emanating from the star at its core that touches the crystal obelisk. The memories of those who die as worlds ended, along with the memories of Steel Python that met their demise were inscribed upon it.

At the bottom of each obelisk, the souls awaiting growth and rebirth naturally accepted the embrace of a world’s memories. Some amongst them were assuming humanoid forms with hands, tails, and horns on their heads, just as others had exoskeletons, insect wings and resembled beetles. They may need decades of natural nurture to gain slight form and might not even grow souls—for the time being, they were amongst the ranks of spawn prototypes.

Each obelisk represented one destroyed world and civilization, with each nourishing souls and a long extinct species. Indeed, what grew within Joshua’s body was the statues of all ruined worlds and the tombstones of fallen civilization that had descended into the Darkest Abyss, but it was also their brand-new hope and future.

It was the greatest weapon tailored against the Evil God of Death that Joshua came up with after thinking long and hard, the final salvation he could give all fallen civilizations in the Darkest Abyss.

[All of you have long since perished. Perhaps it isn’t just other races—even yourselves had forgotten your own name]

[But that is merely the past. From here on out, I would at least remember you, and your history would live eternal with my world]

Even if one person remembered, it was enough to acknowledge the existence of those worlds. As the Sixfold Thresholds of Death had twofolds disavowed, the power of the Evil God of Death hence collapsed significantly—that was why Joshua did not attack physically, instead using the lightest and most agile light as a pathway to drain the world memories from the Chaos.

After looking around as the calming darkness around him, Joshua closed his eyes. The Giant God that had lost all four arms was now the transit hub of data flow, and having lost all resistance, he would be defenseless against any Chaos composite that would ambush him now.

Nevertheless, there was no Chaos composite in the Darkest Abyss that could threaten him now.

All Chaos had been broken, scattered into ‘1’, or much inferior fractions of ‘0.1’ and ‘0.01’—just as he had planned with the Seven Gods back then.

***

“He did it.”

Outside the seven-layered seals put in place by the Seven Gods, Pope Igor, who had rushed to the edge of the Abyss and ready to help repel the Tides of Chaos closed his eyes and said quietly, “How remarkable.”

Presently, the six remaining gods were using their full power directing and lowering the momentum of the Chaos tides, and simply did not have the time to care about Joshua’s movements in the Darkest Abyss. It was the Pope who had rushed to the Abyss to help, the Sage of the Seas and other Legends who had the excess attention to mind that single light flickering at the heart of darkness. They noticed that although the Chaos stirred in the dullness of the Abyssal Paradise within the seven-colored seal, that single blip of silver light never vanished, always regaining its shine whenever it would dim.

Then, after that prompt flash that cut apart the Abyss, the tides of Chaos calmed, placid like a lake’s surface after rain.

Thus, the unrest that infected the entire galaxy—or as it should be called, a ‘self-destructing disturbance’ hence vanished.

In the Sartrean world, all infighting had been pacified and the pollution cleared. What few remaining Sartrean leaders were rebuilding the world on a grand scale. Thanks to the aid of a certain passionate Legendary champion, many violent criminal elements had been suppressed and captured from the start, allowing the reconstruction efforts to move very smoothly. At the same time, the Sartrean ambassador departed for Mycroft in their envoy fleet with the intent of returning to the cosmic stage.

Despite knowing that dangers and countless enemies still lurk in their galaxy, and that the threat of Evil Gods had yet to vanish from this Multiverse, the Sartreans now believed that they could no longer to afford to neglect the issues that plagued them like ostriches that poked their head in the sand. After their rebirth, they now know that giving up on progress was much more terrible than death, and civil conflict was much more hurting than any foreign enemy.

The Lomu world.

Their war stopped by a peacekeeper who suddenly arrived from beyond the skies and forced into a ceasefire agreement, the two empires of Lomu profoundly felt the helplessness of their civilization. The peacekeeper had clearly been using their very own weapons, and yet the output and destructive might it displayed was far beyond what they could imagine—and before that, they would never imagine that ether technology could be refined to the point that it could break mountains with a single blow.

With such vast futures in sight and the clear revelations that there are greater civilizations existing beyond the might, the two Lomu empires at once thought of working together towards the future.

Compared to the restrained slaughter on land, they were more willing to have their souls take to the skies.

Furthermore, in the world of Nier…

***

With the aid and pacifying by countless Mycroft champions, calm hence returned to all civilizations led by the Evil God of Death into self-destructive spirals. Thus did they realize how foolish their actions before were—despite conflict and strife, they would resolve everything with the best solution, and there was no need to end each other even when it came to wars.

Civilizations and worlds permit mistakes and errors, but it should never be repeated, and all conflict would be regarded with utmost radicalism and zeal.

Boom—

A deep voice resounded from the depths of the Abyss, slightly echoing.

The voice itself was faint and illusory. Rumbling was natural in the dimensional turbulences of the Void, and not even Legendary champions noticed it. In fact, the first who noticed was a gray-haired warrior who was conversing with his younger sister from the Abyss—Priest, who had just escaped the meteor and was about to call home realized in shock that him, along with his sister in Mycroft had simultaneously heard the same voice without any delays.

It was the same for the ghostly Sol, but when the Legendary champions noticed it too, there were more distinct anomalies.

Tides were once again engulfing the unilluminated Darkest Abyss, the Chaotic forces that had utterly calmed surging once again. The infinite Chaos abruptly split into thousands of streams, each flowing towards different directions—some combining, others crashing and hence kicking up violent waves.

“The Chaos tides are flowing in reverse!”

Igor, who had ventured deep inside the God of Love and Death’s seal was using holy light to build a planet-like barrier, aiding Yolanda in repelling the Chaos force that was bent on crashing into the normal galaxy. Acutely perceptive towards energy flow, the pontiff quickly noticed that the seemingly limitless Chaos storm was no longer as vicious with each passing wave, with each impact distinctly wilting in momentum.

Now, the elderly pontiff who had been prepared to spare some effort to hold the tides was having a leisurely time to break apart one of the Chaos tides as it had wilted to an all-too-distinct level.

“No, that’s not all.”

The God of Love and Death’s violet holy crest which had fused with the sealing core anchor point responded with a complicated voice. “It’s not merely a reflux… Look, Igor. Turn your eyes to the Void.”

“The energy from the Great Mana Tide now permeates the Abyss.”

The pope quickly turned his head and looked behind him, his gaze bypassing three layers of divine seal towards the upper Abyss and into the normal galaxy. He at once realized that the white mist that had been flowing around every world—the Great Mana Tide that had revitalized all civilizations in the Multiverse was slowly moving.

The white shroud of energy began to surge like an unrelenting gorge that gushed rapidly at the Abyss. Anyone in the seal would be left astonished by the sight: The tides of Chaos had just receded only for the white river to follow right behind it, prompting the illusion that the dark Chaos was repelled by the Mana Tide’s radiance.

Millions of different colored Steel Particles faintly surfaced in the light of the Mana Tide. The six gods, every Legend, along with civilization and champions across the galaxy who could observe the Void noticed that the river of white mist cheered and flowed as if something ahead was drawing and gathering it.

For the first time, the light of the Mana Tide had poured into the Abyss, soaking the upper Abysses and heading straight for the Seven Gods’ sea from every direction and dimension. Soon, they began to gather, crossing the fortress of the God of Order and Destruction along with the perimeter of the God of Law and Freedom, streaking past the citadel of the God of Wisdom and Choice and darting past through the gaps between Yolanda’s great walls.

The God of Life, exerting its full power against the Chaos tides that had yet to recede in his assigned perimeter was startled to discover that the white Mana Tide appearing behind him. It mildly pressed over the light of Chaos, and then transcended the dam made by the God of Conservation and Reformation as well as the massive rift valley created by the God of Might and Justice, before splitting into innumerable while streams which converged into the depths of the Abyss.

Millions of Chaotic streams, and millions of white streams of light.

Within its own world, the Steel Python of Simboa noticed something unusual. Not in dormant slumber, it moved towards the outer reaches of the Void on its own volition, and then turned in shock as it saw that the raging Void Vortex had actually slowly paused—the light of the Mana Tide that gathered there appeared to have found a better converging point and direction and was no longer piling in there.

After swirling for thousands of years, that massive nebula vortex finally paused. The gaping wound over the galaxy was no longer rupturing itself, but showing signs of closing.

***

Meanwhile, at the heart of the Darkest Abyss.

Joshua was unaware what unfolded out there and how astonishing all of it had been. The warrior—his four hands having regrown slowly—simply took a deep breath and raised his right hand.

In that palm, a star that was composed entirely of light had materialized. It emanated a starry radiance, shining upon the surrounding darkness.

That star was the core of the web that had absorbed the memories of countless dead worlds, and the largest data transfer plugin that Joshua could create. When that star appeared, the surrounding Chaos collapsed at an exponential rate—even the unbreakable remains of the Dark Star was reduced to fragile grains beneath its light and disintegrated.

As the star glistened, a massive tower of electromagnetism gained form rapidly. More a stone slab with its square outline than an actual tower, it gathered the multitudinous world fragments—just like the countless obelisks that hosted fallen civilizations inside the warrior’s body, embracing the sorrow and memories of worlds and civilizations that met their end over the last few thousand years.

[We would break the cage and lock—]

Joshua quietly lifted the star, sensing that the runes left by the Sage over the entire Abyssal Paradise collapsing entirely. Seal anchor points were breaking apart as well, while the black holes trap began to disintegrate and diminish.

Finally, thousands of years after the greatest inheritance from the former Glorious Era—the cage and lock kept for the sake of the entire galaxy and the Multiverse utterly collapsed.

It had entered a mistaken cycle, but now advanced toward its own end.

From here on out, the future would be in their control as successors, moving towards hope, distant paths and opening gates.

At the thought, the corner of Joshua’s lips lifted as he raised the star in his grasp.

[Right here, in the Darkest Abyss.]

Meanwhile, the light of the Great Mana Tide finally entered the lightless Abyssal Paradise.

The gloom which has engulfed the former Vortex of Creation over thousands of years was now slowly dispersing. Massive streams of white energy that carried Steel Particles were gathering with dark streams of Chaos, mixing and swirling into a single great vortex. Connected to countless Nether Rivers, innumerable worlds were slowly forming in the swirl that was black and white.

Indeed, the Chaos had yet to dissipate—and would be so for a long time into the future.

But so what?

As the dawn arrived, the shady curtains remain. The starry skies and the land would hence be kept within the darkness.

Even so, everyone knows that the sun would rise afterward.

Watching as white light slowly shone, the tired Giant God of Steel could finally close his eyes.

He saw that the night was shedding for the morning that ends it.

Then, an even more dazzling silver world would hence descend…

…upon the very heart of the vortex.

Volume 16, Darkest Abyss. End.