Soul of Burning Steel

The mother tree met all Joshua's requirements.

Whether it is the most advanced leap engine of the people in the courtyard, or the corpse of the void beast, or even the part of the body of the void mother beast that was crushed and left in the universe, as long as the warrior thinks, no matter how precious the material or top-secret technology, The mother tree will satisfy him without hesitation. At first glance, this seems like a broken jar, a dead horse being treated like a living horse doctor—since the people in the courtyard are completely unable to defeat the enemy on their own, then simply let Joshua, who is also an existence outside the curtain, do whatever he wants , See what waves the other party can stir up in this pool of stagnant water.

"Your requests are very reasonable, and I have no reason to refuse you."

But in fact, the Mother Tree explained her actions in this way: "First try to learn how to move at a high speed, grasp the initiative in battle, and then learn about the enemy's army and the enemy itself. These are very organized and very normal requirements. However, the body remains of the female beast must remain in our body to be suppressed, its erosive power is too strong, and you cannot take it out."

"Of course, I understand the characteristics of Chaos monsters, especially this one."

Deep in the earth's crust, inside the body of the mother tree, Joshua did not respond too much to the mother tree's words in the temporarily constructed huge wooden chamber, because he is currently concentrating on analyzing the extremely complicated and strange half-crystal half-plant creation in front of him.

The huge wooden chamber is 120 meters long, wide and high, and the six walls are all dark brown tough biological substances deliberately produced by the mother tree. Such a huge space, not to mention individual parts, can accommodate even a smaller unmanned warship here, but at this time, it is occupied by a blue spherical behemoth most of the space. Joshua was floating in mid-air now, and he used the power of steel to peel off the outer layer of the huge sphere bit by bit.

There is no doubt that this huge blue sphere is an important technology that the people of the atrium rely on for transportation, the "spiritual leap engine". It is precisely because of this technology that the atrium civilization was able to span light years distance, travel to other galaxies to colonize. Now, fighters are using their own methods to understand the meaning behind this technology.

With the power of steel as his arm, Joshua carefully peeled off the shell of this extremely delicate semi-biological engine, and tried not to damage its internal energy circuits and spiritual structure, but even if he had obtained the mother tree With the complete set of engine design drawings given as a gift, Joshua couldn't guarantee that he could completely dismantle its external protective armor and components. He could only dismantle part of it each time, and then record and store the information of that part.

This process lasted for nearly eight hours. During this time, the old mage was invited by Mirhabs to go to the library in the center of the Eastern Continent of the Atrium to read about the "constant" of this world, which is The so-called data of the laws of the world. Legendary powerhouses are super life forms that have evolved to the limit, but they are not able to show their great power in all worlds. For example, if a superpower goes to a world with almost no supernatural power, it will easily become weak due to exhaustion, or even become weak. die. Although the world of stars has psionic energy, and because of the great demon tide, the energy concentration is enough to supply the needs of legendary powerhouses, but overall it is still very different from the world of Mycroft.

Nostradamus is not Joshua. He uses the power of steel as his foundation, so he must refer to the local energy situation and basic constants, and then fine-tune himself, so that he can exert his full strength.

In addition, Hotaru and Rin fought alongside Joshua. Hotaru was responsible for helping Joshua remove part of the armor of the jump engine, while Rin was helping the warrior find the most dense structure of psychic energy. The region with the most pronounced spatiotemporal fluctuations. The sphere of light was in Joshua's pocket, seemingly resting. After half a day of intensive analysis work, the warrior finally understood the working principle of the Atrium Human's Psychic Leap Engine.

"Stimulate psionic energy with flesh and blood, and then expand it with crystal machinery. The powerful psionic energy will separate the gaps in the material world and create a 'spiritual vacuum' similar to void. In this psionic vacuum, specially designed warships It can be accelerated infinitely, moving forward at the speed of thinking, until the end of the extension of psionic energy."

There was a silver light in his eyes, and Joshua, who had roughly finished the analysis, pondered for a while. The engine design of the Atrium people was really exquisite. They created artificial psionic plants, which released far more powerful psychic energy than ordinary Atrium people. Then use the crystal mechanical structure to maintain the vitality of the spiritual plant, and amplify its spiritual energy hundreds or even thousands of times, and finally use this powerful spiritual energy to tear the time-space transition. It seems to be a perfect design that is self-consistent, self-healing, and can last infinitely as long as there is enough psychic plant culture fluid, but it actually has a lot of flaws.

First of all, the first one is the jump distance. Although the speed of the warships of the people in the courtyard is said to be the same as thinking, arriving as soon as they think about it, just like teleportation, but in fact, their spiritual power cannot be extended for a long time, even through the special crystal craft design of the people in the courtyard. , and there is no way to exceed three trillion kilometers, which means that if they want to span a distance of one light-year, they need to jump twenty or thirty times, or even more. After each jump, they need to pause for a long time to cool down. The more the number of transitions, the more error-prone they are, which is why the people in the atrium only colonized three planets within a thousand years. This is because their transition technology is stuck at the level of spiritual power.

However, this intensity is not as easy to increase as crystal crafts or biotechnology. Even if the Zhongting people are determined to collectively transform their own race, it will take one or two generations of them, that is, one or two hundred years. There are results.

"My power of steel can simulate psionic energy...According to what they say, my psionic energy is far stronger than the Omega-level psykers in the atrium, and even several times stronger than the flagship Forerunner at full power. If I were in the Iron Giant If the engine is reconstructed in the body of the main body, then my leap distance should be farther than the battleship of the people in the courtyard, after all, my body strength is far stronger than the materials that the people in the courtyard can find, and the material foundation is very solid."

In theory, it is. But the reason why Joshua pondered is precisely because of this—although he has already roughly understood the operating principle of this engine through the engine design diagram given by the mother tree and his own disassembly analysis, and he is sure that he can reproduce it. But things like leaping cannot be sloppy, this is a must for cosmic scale battles. He always felt that there was something he didn't grasp. However, the soldier is not someone who will always be entangled in such trivial matters, so he immediately changed his mind and started the next stage of research.

"Not much time, let me take a look at the corpses of the void-derived beasts and the body fragments of the mother beasts."

The corpse of the Void Derivative Beast was brought over by the survivors of the Root Garden through an emergency conveyor belt, while the body fragments of the female beast were the special operations troops of the Root Garden, who forcibly escaped from the siege of countless Derivative Beasts at the risk of almost certain death. It was picked up in the universe. After hearing Joshua's request, the mother tree silently integrated the dismantled 7788 psychic engines into its own body, and then raised a wooden experimental platform again. On the stage, there is a layer of psionic shield and the corpse of the void derivative beast.

"Good guy... what the hell is this..."

Even Joshua couldn't help frowning when he saw the body of the Void Derivative Beast with his own eyes. In the memory passed down by the mother tree at that time, it was not obvious because it was a space war separated by tens of thousands of miles. But now that the opponent is right in front of his eyes, the contrast is very strong.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the Void Derivative Beast is ugly, weird, or indescribable—in fact, Joshua was surprised because its appearance was too simple.

"Isn't this just a ball with a few tentacles?"

On the side, Yingying couldn't help complaining: "And even the tentacles don't feel slippery and sticky, it feels like a steel whip."

"It's a bit different from what I imagined..." Rin also nodded, and he looked closer with some doubts, but he didn't find anything special about the opponent: "It's really just the tentacles and the ball itself. ...What exactly does it rely on to fight?"

Put on the experimental table, the body of the derivative beast was nearly 20 meters long and 15 meters high. According to the mother tree, it was just the weakest juvenile body, while the mature derivative beast was hundreds of meters in size. It will also be covered with black-red crystalline minerals like bone spurs, which can emit high-heat energy streams, which are strong enough to cut the armor of battleships. There are various types of larvae, such as cylinder-like ones with many solid arthropods at the lower end, and those with a roughly crown-like structure. In general, they can be divided into five categories: ball, spiral symmetry, bullet-shaped, Icosahedron, cylinder and finally tadpole.

The appearance of these derivative beasts is simple, and there is even a bit of simple and smooth beauty, which is completely different from the many twisted and weird chaos monsters that Joshua has seen before, but he can feel the extremely strong chaotic atmosphere from them, and for some reason , he always had an eerie sense of familiarity.

"By the way, it's a virus!"

As for Joshua, who was already able to search the database and review his memory, it didn't take long for him to find the source of that familiarity with ease—the shapes of these void derivative beasts were enlarged in various ways Hundreds of millions of times more viruses? !

Although they are only similar in appearance, they are completely chaotic monsters in essence, but in the final analysis, it is the shape of a virus!

After realizing this, Joshua stepped forward without hesitation, and reached out to touch the body of the ball monster. In the loud warning from the mother tree, he immediately realized that when he broke through the spiritual power set by the mother tree, The moment the shield directly touched the corpse, there were countless extremely tiny 'life', or in other words, 'chaos power' trying to invade his body in the most direct and brutal way. These extremely tiny microcosmic forces attempted to disintegrate the warrior's body, then assimilate and break through from the inside, and then infect Joshua into a chaotic monster like them. Everything was the same as microcosmic viruses invading cells, but it was just so many times faster.

"Sure enough, it's the plague god. A familiar routine."

With a wave of his hand, the flowing silver light wiped out all the invisible chaotic power. The power of steel is the foundation of all things. In terms of assimilation power, it is more virus than virus. When two phases meet, naturally the warrior wins. And at this moment, Joshua couldn't help recalling the scene when Robzek had to kill a dozen of his paladin students in the Plaguelands. The chaotic power in Mycroft Continent is severely suppressed, so it needs to be touched by bodily fluids to be infected, and those paladins who suddenly became crazy must have been invaded and assimilated by this chaotic virus, right? It was right for Robzek to kill all of them decisively, because those people were no longer human beings, but human-shaped chaos containers.

This is the terrible beginning of the plague. It may not be able to compete with the famine, the family members of natural disasters, crystal insects and stone demons in frontal combat capabilities, but it is far superior in terms of weirdness.

"...I was overthinking. Come to think of it, an existence of your level would not be afraid of this weird erosive power."

Seeing that Joshua did not show any abnormalities, the mother tree's voice became calmer, and it whispered in an emotionless, almost indifferent tone: "On the Garden of Roots, almost all the survivors are waiting for you. In strange places like cold storage, around volcanoes, or sterile laboratories, people in other regions will turn into the prototype of the monster in front of you in just three days, and then follow the void mother beast to the next place. It’s a colony planet... Even plants are no exception, this weird power can assimilate and erode as long as it is life."

"The other party is the natural enemy of organic life. Although you are known as a spiritual civilization, in the final analysis, you have not yet escaped the exorcism, so it is normal for you to be restrained by the evil plague god."

After scanning the corpse of the derivative beast at a glance—or, in other words, the active chaos virus aggregate that has lost the ability to act proactively, Joshua murmured: "So, the so-called Void Mother Beast is the source of the plague, it The so-called invasion is to infect one world after another... It's not quite the same as the swarm I think. But it's a good thing."

Because his body is the steel giant that emits thousands of degrees or even tens of thousands of degrees of heat all over his body, and uses the fusion star as the energy source in his body-no matter what kind of virus he is, it will never infect him, even if it is Chaos virus is also not good. Anyway, even without the Azure Orb, Joshua still possesses some power of order.

It's hard to say about the evil plague god, but its family members are naturally restrained by him! If the other party is a virus, then he is a white blood cell.

Thinking of this, my mood immediately improved a lot. But Joshua suddenly frowned again. He remembered the source of the plague at that time, that is, the scene where the Void Mother Beast destroyed the Atrium Colonial Star Squadron in an instant——the endless dark green mask spread at 360, All the asteroids and warships along the way vanished in an instant. The fighters of this trick have not yet figured out what the principle is—is it antimatter annihilation? Or material disintegration? Or, is it an extremely special chaotic virus that erodes all matter?

No matter how you say it, it was a very difficult move, and Joshua was not sure whether the other party could decompose his body. After all, he hadn't completed 100% assimilation, and his own mass was far from that of a white dwarf star. It can be temporarily condensed during battle, and a part of the body can be temporarily turned into a white dwarf.

"Joshua, do you still want to see the body fragments of the Void Mother Beast?"

While Joshua was still thinking, he heard the mother tree's will saying aside, so he nodded, "Let me see."

Soon, the body of the Void Derived Beast was immediately covered by the spiritual light, and then submerged into the body of the mother tree. As a super life form, the mother tree can naturally understand the horror of the chaos virus, but it has survived for thousands of years and is the will of the psykers in the courtyard. Naturally, it will not be afraid of this level of erosion, and it can even be the same as Joshua. Reverse analysis of the other party, but the speed is very slow.

The next moment, another high platform covered with a psychic shield emerged from the wooden chamber. Joshua strode forward and looked at the fragments in the beam of light.

"Hasn't it lost its activity yet?"

Appearing in front of Joshua's eyes was a black sphere that was constantly wriggling and splitting, and spontaneously suspended in mid-air. This sphere is five meters in diameter, and from time to time, smaller black spheres are ejected to hit the spiritual energy barrier set up by the mother tree. The shield also vibrated visibly. After the smaller spheres failed to collide, they shattered into clusters of dark green dense fog. This dense fog has extremely strong erosive and assimilative powers, trying to erode away the spiritual energy shield of the mother tree bit by bit. It can be clearly seen that layers of mold are growing out of thin air inside the spiritual energy shield, and dark green pus is continuously flowing out of it.

"The body fragment of the female beast has an extremely terrifying assimilation ability. Whether it is matter, energy or spiritual power, it can swallow and strengthen itself... Before capturing it, we have always wondered why the Forby people He would allow the Chaos Monster he summoned to grow so big, and why he fled in such a panic, thinking about it now, it was probably because of this."

The mother tree's words flowed through Joshua's ears, and he certainly understood what it meant. Obviously, when the so-called Forbes opened the door to the void and summoned the family of the evil god of plague, the female beast must not have been so big, maybe it was very small, and then let the group of interstellar races who had not met before relax their vigilance . And when the plague swept the world and the female beast showed its full strength and began to rapidly assimilate and grow in size, the Forby people must have lost their ability to resist... Maybe there are some female beasts lurking in their migration spaceship The body, just like the virus, deliberately spared the fleeing Forbis, and then used them as hosts to infect other races in the universe.

Apart from reconfirming that this was indeed the Familiars of the Plague God, Joshua did not find anything special. He also reached out and let the fragments of the female beast erode his body, but the result was unsuccessful. The erosive power of the female beast is indeed much greater than that of the chaos virus, but it still cannot break through the defense of the warriors. The power of steel is too powerful in resisting this kind of erosion. It can even reversely assimilate the female beast, just like Assimilating part of the opponent's body into a rock for his own use, it's just that it's too slow, and it takes too much effort, otherwise Joshua would want the people in the courtyard to shoot himself into the body of the Void Mother Beast like a cannonball. My own 'white blood cells' are going to wipe out those viruses.

"It is true that all things have mutual generation and mutual restraint. I didn't expect you to be able to completely ignore this erosive force, which is simply a natural enemy to us Zhongting people... It is our luck to summon you, and it is also the protection of the saints."

After seeing that Joshua could even assimilate the female beast in turn, the voice of the mother tree in the courtyard suddenly became much lower. From this voice, no hint of luck and joy could be heard at all.

Undoubtedly, even the mother tree, which is a collection of wills, began to fear Joshua's power. If it could not feel the aura of a saint from the warrior, it might have listed this guy who is more terrifying than the evil god's family. Strictly guard against those who cannot be contacted, and even say that they should be transferred to alien colonies as much as possible, away from the main body.

What a joke, a white blood cell capable of phagocytosis and assimilation indefinitely - what is the difference between this and those chaotic viruses! Although he didn't know about leukemia, the instinct of the mother tree was still vigilant.

Joshua didn't care about the other party's vigilance. To be honest, he himself was a little afraid of his own strength. This is not a joke, but a reality - if one day, after a 100% communication with the Force of Steel, the soldier completely loses control over the Force of Steel and becomes a puppet of this force, then his ending will either be his own. Either it will become extinct, or it will become a living white dwarf star that is like leukemia, constantly devouring and assimilating the orderly world with an extremely small possibility. Even if it is transformed into a small black hole, it is not impossible.

But to be on guard is to be on guard, Joshua has confidence in his own control. Even if he is divine, he can suppress it, let alone the power of steel condensed by him? The soldier couldn't even figure out how far he would have to degenerate to be reduced to that level.

"Okay... I almost understand what the enemy itself is."

Having acquired the means of cosmic battle and understood the nature of the enemy, Joshua has completed most of his goals in the Atrium Star at this time. He turned his head and said towards the top of his head, which is where the mother tree's will lies: "Thank you very much. Also, can you provide me with a spacious and quiet place? I'm going to start trying to build a leap engine in my body."

"Don't worry, Mother Tree, I won't stay with you for long. After all, I'm just an outsider in this world."

"When the jump engine is built, it's time for me and my companions to set off."

Network problems, force majeure, late update, there will be another chapter later

This chapter was handed over to the master of the Qidian Technology Department because of the network, and I accidentally reversed the order... Now it has been revised, so you can re-download this chapter to see the correct order