Rogue Villain-Chapter 288: Alien

The shards of Ackster’s soul floated in the air, unaffected by gravity, as they slowly drifted apart and lost their light, which was invisible to most existences in the first place. However, there were a few fragments that didn’t lose their light, even when the rest did, and Ackster was as dead as he could be.

He didn’t have a body, a heartbeat, a soul, or anything that could be called life.

But the heat of the blue sun continued blazing and spreading, trying to burn the very crumbs of Ackster’s soul into ash in the wind.

A few soul shards started succumbing to the heat, unable to resist anymore as the heat increased seemingly without end.

That was when an opposing force pulled on the shards and divided the heat evenly among them. The incineration stopped for a moment until the heat rose again.

But the still glowing shards that had dragged all the others into one place let out an even stronger glow. Some of them faded after that. But two shards continued shining bright, even in the face of certain fiery death.

They continued keeping the fragments of Ackster’s soul in one place.

But that was the limit.

Not even the shards containing the essence of the two skills, Unstoppable and Survivalist, could fight back against the fire contained in the last shard with light, Smelting Furnace, which also happened to be where the heat was leaking out of. They also couldn’t do more than keep the shards in one place. They couldn’t repair Ackster’s soul or even glue the pieces back together.

The pile of glassy, dull shards was far from the pristine state Ackster needed to be in to fight back against the blue sun.

Despite the despairing situation, neither Ackster nor his skills, especially the ones built on his tenacity and stubbornness, such as Unstoppable, Survivalist, or even the already dull, Stubborn Well-Being, wanted to give up.

However, Unstoppable and Survivalist weren’t shining as brightly as before while the blue sun was gaining more and more momentum, unleashing more and more of its heat and fire. Parts of Ackster’s soul could no longer withstand the heat and melted before turning to dusty ash and fading into the wind.

However, Ackster’s soul wasn’t the only thing finally succumbing to the heat.

After hiding deep in Ackster’s inventory, the Stone of Wisdom he got from the Ant Queen was now inside Smelting Furnace.

Surprisingly enough, it held up against the blue sun’s flames and heat almost as well as the broken trident. However, the Stone of Wisdom caved first.

The purple stone, slightly smaller than Ackster’s fist, which he hadn’t even cared about since after he first got it since he thought it was useless, now experienced the first change to its structure since it came into existence eons ago.

The tiny purple stone cracked. At first, it was a fine white line like a cat’s whisker in the middle. But the crack spread and covered the stone in cobweb-like scars. After that, it didn’t take long for the heat to penetrate the Stone of Wisdom and feed the cracks until the stone shattered.

The Stone leaked a thick purple liquid, deep like the night sky in color but vibrant like the son in hue. When the purple liquid was exposed to the heat, it grew thinner and ran more easily as the rest of the Stone melted and joined the liquid.

The liquid was simply the molten Stone of Wisdom. It didn’t have its own intelligence or will. It didn’t have personality or feelings. It just existed. But as a unique treasure just a step below refined Heavenly Iron, it had its own wondrous properties.

Although labeled the Stone of Wisdom, it wasn’t exactly correct to limit it in such a way. The Stone of Wisdom was a physical manifestation and condensation of one of the universe’s many energies and forces.

Under the mixed heat and threat from the blue sun and the Smelting Furnace’s remaining forging embers, the liquid Stone of Wisdom reacted. Rather than being burned to nothingness in the face of the blue sun’s relentless and hateful fire, the Stone of Wisdom flowed toward the Smelting Furnace’s side, using that heat to refine itself and both deepen and lighten its color until it turned into liquid glass that was either purple so deep nothing else could be seen when looking at it or completely translucent glass that could barely be seen.

When the Smelting Furnace had finished refining the liquid Stone of Wisdom and lost most of its heat, the liquid Stone of Wisdom disappeared. Like any material refined by the Smelting Furnace, it turned into substance and building blocks for Ackster’s body. The Smelting Furnace completed its mission one last time before Ackster died.

It was just that the refined and smelted Stone of Wisdom didn’t have a body to reinforce. It appeared in the center of Ackster, who was now nothing but a pile of broken shards of his soul, barely held together by the remaining Spirit and willpower in two of those shards.

Fortunately, the Stone of Wisdom wasn’t constrained to the physical realm, especially when the fire and refining had unleashed its latent supernatural powers that were closer to the realm of souls than the physical world anyway.

Like a slime or an alien, the liquid Stone of Wisdom spread out and stretched wide to encapsulate all of Ackster’s remaining soul shards, including the source of the infernal heat, the Smelting Furnace.

The liquid Stone of Wisdom forced all the shards together, trapping them in one gradually shrinking sphere of itself. It trapped the blue sun’s heat inside itself. But while the soul shards suffered, the Stone itself remained unharmed. The heat outside the Smelting Furnace still wasn’t as bad as it had been inside when the Stone cracked.

The purple liquid seeped into the cracks and spaces between all the shards, isolating them from each other while connecting them.

The blue sun tried to resist as it released a seemingly endless amount of fire and heat. But the stone trapped all of it inside the Smelting Furnace, forcing the shard to endure, endure, and endure the heat. Fortunately, even Smelting Furnace had come into existence by relying on Ackster’s willpower and tenacity. So, it held itself together by the seams while the Stone of Wisdom and the gradually melting shards mixed like crushed ice and warm water.

The Stone of Wisdom was doing something, and the Smelting Furnace knew it needed to hold on and keep the blue sun contained until it was finished. But the prognosis wasn’t promising.