Chapter 1766 - 1766. Hunt
'Don't even try that,' Noah thought while covering Isaac's corpse with dark matter and glancing at the sky.
Whiteness had started to condense in the sky since Heaven and Earth wanted to resurrect their follower, but Noah wouldn't just stand by. He had found too many experts of that kind to let the rulers bring them back to life.
A sense of weakness filled his body when he deactivated Isaac's ability. His new spell didn't carry any drawback, but it depleted an immense amount of energy. Moreover, Noah was already suffering from his previous activation of the ambition, so his overall situation worsened.
A deep cut that reached his internal organs had also appeared on his torso. His body wasn't in the upper tier anymore, so he had a harder time enduring the drawbacks of the cursed sword. Still, that damage was nothing when he had many sources of power around him.
Isaac's body provided an intense wave of nutrients that the black hole didn't hesitate to purify and send to the rest of his body. Noah instantly felt better, but his condition remained far from optimal. However, his innate resilience allowed him to express his peak power anyway.
'What should I do now?' Noah wondered as his gaze fell on the battlefield.
Every powerful cultivator on the Crystal City's side had a matching opponent, and the same went for the experts fighting among the army. The situation even seemed in favor of Noah's group, so he didn't find anything that required his immediate assistance.
Noah felt that the battlefield still hid something. Heaven and Earth had been willing to give another law to Isaac, which revealed their intention to spend energy on the fight. He even guessed that the rulers had already planted something in the region, but everything was still unclear for now.
'I guess I can hunt for now,' Noah thought as a cold smile appeared on his face and his weapons returned inside the separate space.
His figure disappeared as he shot toward the two clashing armies. The battlefield had many weaker rank 8 experts busy against existences at a similar level, but Noah didn't care about respecting their fights. He only made sure to avoid his companions during his hunt.
Noah reappeared behind a rank 8 cultivator in the liquid stage covered in a thick layer of water. Her technique seemed able to protect her from all the incoming attacks, but it couldn't do anything when black roots pierced it and entangled her body.
The cultivator struggled to free herself of the roots destroying her skin, but Noah's hand arrived and put an end to her sufferings. Her head fell, and a wave of dark matter covered her body to devour her.
The experts that were fighting the woman wanted to complain, but their words remained stuck in their throats when they sensed Noah's coldness. His aura radiated a chilling killing intent that couldn't possibly belong to a human. He was a beast unleashed in a field full of targets.
Noah disappeared again and materialized above another rank 8 expert. The cultivator used his flames to create multiple fiery flowers that rotated around him, but the technique dispersed as soon as Noah waved his hand.
The black slash that came out of Noah's fingers severed the expert in half, and dark matter soon covered those parts. Energy flowed inside his body as the higher energy turned the cultivator into nothing more than nutrients, but they barely managed to satisfy Noah's hunger.
Noah repeated the process multiple times. The battlefield was his hunting ground, and the experts inside it were too busy with their opponents to deploy any defense at his arrival. Those who manage to launch something saw their spells falling apart in front of his slashes before darkness filled their vision.
Liquid and gaseous stage cultivators couldn't do much to satisfy Noah's hunger, but the additional energy gathered during the hunt helped the black hole disperse the drawbacks of his ambition. His condition constantly improved and slowly returned to its peak.
Noah felt surprised that Heaven and Earth didn't activate anything even after ten rank 8 experts had died by his hand. The rulers seemed to have gone silent, but that only made him more reckless in his hunt. The battle wouldn't take much to end if the world didn't start opposing him soon.
Still, Heaven and Earth continued to remain silent, and Noah kept gathering energy. The battlefield soon started to fall apart due to the lack of powerful experts on the Crystal City's side. Noah's weaker troops took over the fight and began to overwhelm their opponents.
Only the battles high in the sky remained even, but they had also started to show signs of ending. They revealed mixed outcomes, but most of Noah's friends seemed to have the upper hand. Only Jordan was struggling a bit, but Noah didn't feel the need to intervene just yet.
'Fine,' Noah eventually sighed in his mind. 'Let everything crumble since you aren't able to put up a decent challenge.'
Noah flew back toward the surface and placed his hand on the shattered ground. His influence expanded and spread through the region, and cracks inevitably opened on the already broken terrain.
His destruction forced most of the region to continue to fall apart, but his ambition transformed the debris and boulders as they crumbled. The color of the surface changed, and dark shades spread everywhere around him.
Noah wanted to force Heaven and Earth's hand, but even the transformation of the plain didn't seem to trigger their reaction. A few doubts began to form in his mind at that point. He started to wonder whether the rulers were waiting on purpose to raise the stakes of their punishment.
'Do they want to sacrifice the entire army to send something powerful?' Noah wondered. 'Why help Isaac then?'
Noah remained confused. Part of him even thought about retreating for a moment to stop Heaven and Earth's plan, but he quickly suppressed that idea.
Making Heaven and Earth waste energy was the original plan. The war would only hurt their troops, but it wouldn't do anything to their actual power. Noah wanted to weaken the rulers, so he had to let the war continue even if his instincts were telling him that something was off.
Something spectacular happened while Noah was in the middle of transforming the area. The battles higher in the sky were still raging, but one of them reached its end faster than the others.
Divine Demon was against one of the solid stage cultivators from the Crystal City. His opponent seemed to use his voice to create quick and powerful figures capable of unleashing soundwaves.
That ability appeared quite threatening, especially since the expert didn't need much to cast it. A simple whistle was enough to create multiple creatures that ran through the sky and exploded next to his opponent.
Divine Demon had turned that fight into a whistling challenge. His sounds were able to destabilize the cultivator's creatures and make them explode next to him. He had become so good at it that some of them had ended up detonating inside the expert's mouth.
The cultivator couldn't do much with his offensive completely countered. Launching attacks ended up hurting him, so he remained silent and began to look for another opponent. However, Divine Demon started to use his whistles offensively at that point, which inevitably brought the expert closer to his death.
Divine Demon gave voice to a laugh once the expert died. He had suffered many injuries during the initial stages of the fight, but he didn't seem to care about them. Instead, the world suddenly released a humming noise and started generating energy for him.
Waves of azure energy began to converge toward Divine Demon and fuse with his body. His cultivation level rose as his influence expanded, and the world released another humming sound when he crossed the limits of the liquid stage.