Birth of the Demonic Sword

Noah left the cave in the seabed for the first time after fifteen years spent in seclusion. The cracks in the sky had widened in that period, but their size was in line with Shandal's predictions.

'Less than five hundred years,' Noah thought as he glanced at the sky before setting off for the western side of the new continent.

Noah flew slowly and let his superior awareness learn as much as possible about the new environment of the world. Various packs of Eternal Snakes appeared in his path, but he avoided all of them.

It wasn't time to fight them yet. Noah wanted to train for a while before starting his massive hunt.

The environment had already started to change in those years. The magical beasts released auras capable of changing the territories around them into lands that suited their species.

It usually took centuries for a single pack of magical beasts to modify an environment. Still, the world had already begun to show changes due to the numerous Eternal Snakes in the sixth rank.

The temperature had dropped, and ice covered vast areas. Even part of the sea couldn't escape that change.

Noah guessed that the world would soon contain only one species of magical beasts. It wouldn't take much before Eternal Snakes in the first rank started to appear either.

Nothing could stop that trend. Noah couldn't perform a clearing operation on the entire world just yet, so both landmasses and sea would soon turn into the perfect breeding ground of the Eternal Snakes.

A layer of thick ice covered a location in the sea west of the new continent, and Noah dived right through it to reach his destination.

The seabed soon appeared in his eyes, and Noah expanded his consciousness to find traces of formations in the area. His mental waves eventually found dormant inscriptions, and he didn't hesitate to swim toward them.

Those lines lit up when Noah touched them, and light engulfed his figure. He soon found himself in the familiar environment separate dimension, which appeared far larger now that no one occupied it.

Noah used a few teleportation matrices powered by formations that gathered "Breath" from the outside world. A city eventually appeared in his eyes, and he quickly moved toward its center.

The city's central building was the tallest structure in the area, but Noah only cared about what it contained. A secret room on the last floor hid a teleportation matrix that led him to a separate location that confined a large piece of black fur.

The Hive couldn't carry the Seventh Kesier rune through the dimensional portal. That was a proper divine item coming from a divine magical beast. That tunnel through the void would have never endured the pressure that it released.

Thirty-seven and his disciples had planned to make copies of the Seventh Kesier rune as soon as Noah brought it back from the hidden world. Yet, the project was quite ambitious, and it had taken them centuries only to come close to a decent imitation.

Kesier runes wouldn't carry all their miraculous power in their copies, so it was always more beneficial to train with the original. Still, even the imitations were quite valuable since they were more efficient than other training methods for the sea of consciousness.

The Hive mainly wanted to use the copies as insurance in case of invasions, but it could also trade them for items with equal value. It wasn't a surprise that Thirty-seven had something ready before the attack of the Eternal Snakes.

'I wonder if I should bring this in the Immortal Lands,' Noah thought as he looked at the rune. 'I don't have a proper use for it after I become a rank 7 mage.'

Noah was still wondering whether he would build his Inheritance. He rarely did things for others, especially those that he had never met. However, most cultivators abided by that tradition.

Inheritances didn't only express the dreams of their creators. They were a mark of the existence of the cultivators.

Noah's allies had already left the world, so he couldn't gift his teachings to anyone close to him. Yet, Divine Demon had created his Inheritance without giving it to the Demon sects, so Noah could take him as an example.

'I guess I have to save the world first before thinking about leaving something behind,' Noah thought as he suppressed those ideas.

His mind focused entirely on the Seventh Kesier rune at that point, and a long training session began. Noah didn't only expand his mind in that period. He also ate and cultivated as if the world wasn't about to end.

Years quickly passed as Noah focused on improving his centers of power. His battle against the Eternal Snake had proven that he could face peak rank 6 magical beasts, but he wouldn't find a solitary creature in the current environment.

He had to become stronger before he could approach the hunts. That would be his second-last long seclusion before he started to focus only on the Snakes. He would enter the last one once he obtained enough materials to resume his experiments with the creature's innate ability.

Noah tried his best to keep track of the passage of time at that time. He couldn't let five hundred years slip by while he focused on improving his centers of power.

Still, a whole century went by before he snapped out of his constant training. His dantian had to show signs of an imminent breakthrough for him to understand that he had spent too long in seclusion.

'Time to hunt,' Noah thought as he left the separate dimension.

Noah flew through the world and inspected the various lairs that the Eternal Snakes had built. A large part of the landmasses had turned into blocks of ice in those years, but the number of rank 6 specimens appeared lower than before.

That was within Noah's predictions. Many rank 6 magical beasts couldn't cohabitate for a long time without a leader who suppressed their innate aggression.

The net of cracks had enlarged a lot in those years. He could still see the sky, but it was clear that the world was going toward its end.

The quasi-rank 7 Eternal Snake had created the largest pack and had settled at the center of the new continent, where the silver liquid of the divine beasts had fallen.

The peripheral areas of that landmass and the old continent accommodated smaller packs, but the nine peak rank 6 Snakes led most of them.

The only place that contained even smaller packs and weaker Eternal Snakes was the sea, but that was enough to give Noah an idea of how he had to approach the hunt.

Noah flew toward the most distant area from the continents and dived into the sea. His consciousness expanded at that point, and he searched for any trace of life that was worthy of his time.

It didn't take him much to find a few Eternal Snakes that wandered outside of every pack. Even the magical beasts' world had exiled specimens, and they were the first creatures that Noah had decided to hunt.

'I should kill them quickly,' Noah thought when he looked at the three rank 6 Snakes in the distance, and dark matter came out of his chest.