Birth of the Demonic Sword

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"Did you just create the ethereal center of power?" Noah almost shouted while asking that question.

"It wasn't too hard," King Elbas scoffed. "I only had to take a bit of mental energy, shatter my flames into weaker fuels, and mix everything to create a stable form. I might have used replicas of my flesh stored a few centuries ago, a metal filled with my curiosity meant for other experiments, a piece of the centipede to add a bit of rank 9 aura, a bit of p-."​​

"I get it," Noah interrupted King Elbas when he felt that the list wouldn't stop anytime soon. "Do you know why it doesn't work?"

"I built this in less than a day," King Elbas snorted. "I can count thousands of flaws just by reviewing it. I think the main issue is the lack of higher energy in its fabric. It can't express the entirety of myself without it."

"Why didn't you add higher energy then?" Noah asked while crouching to study the almost invisible golden glow.

His mental waves struggled to understand the actual nature of the ethereal center of power. Noah sensed its faint curiosity and energy, but he couldn't pinpoint its exact position. It didn't even feel connected to King Elbas.

"I believe you know how it ends when you add higher energy to the mix," King Elbas commented. "Don't you have a similar technique?"

Noah could only nod at those words. He had reviewed the embodiment of power with King Elbas in the past, and the two had concluded that Noah couldn't create a stable fuel due to the immense diversity among the materials.

Still, their senses weren't lying to them. Both King Elbas and Noah had experienced Lord Lewis' breakthrough, so they knew that the new center of power required the entirety of their existence.

It wouldn't be a problem if their higher energy were only a tool used only to improve some of their abilities. Noah and King Elbas could simply cut it away from their arsenal for the sake of the breakthrough to the ninth rank in that situation.

However, King Elbas had abandoned his "Breath" during his battle against the entire world, and Noah's black hole had replaced his heart. The higher energy had become a core part of their existence, and they couldn't forsake it during their breakthrough.

"Why do we keep making things hard for ourselves?" Noah cursed as he sat on the ground covered by dark matter and started playing with his energies.

His mental energy, dark matter, darkness, and primary energy gathered on his palm and tried to take different shapes as they fused and strived for a stable form. Noah didn't go over that process in millennia since he had already obtained the d.e.s.i.r.ed technique, but it seemed that the cultivation journey would force him to repeat that study.

Noah was an existence in the last step of the eighth rank now. His understanding of the cultivation journey and laws had reached levels that he couldn't even imagine when he created the unstable substance. Yet, he faced the same struggles encountered back then. Those four energies didn't want to fuse.

"It's not like we can stop," King Elbas gave voice to a helpless laugh. "We aren't like Heaven and Earth either. Our existence is nowhere close to their level of instability, so a solution that doesn't involve cutting away pieces of our existence must exist."

"Maybe our centers of power will naturally find a method to stabilize the energies once we reach the very peak of the eighth rank," Noah shrugged his shoulders as he lay on the ground and inspected the blackness around him.

"And get lucky?" King Elbas laughed. "As if that would ever happen. I'm sure we'll have to do something crazy just to take a step in the right direction."

"The world is almost over," Noah sighed. "I'm running out of crazy plans."

"You never run out of them," King Elbas snorted. "And the world isn't over. We are merely stuck in a limited system that doesn't give us access to the other powerful planes."

"I bet you already have a way to travel through the void for millennia if everything here fails," Noah sneered.

"Of course," King Elbas proudly announced. "Who goes against the entire world without creating twenty backup plans? That's simply idiotic."

"We need to express ourselves, right?" Noah suggested after spending a few minutes in silence. "What if the fusion has to happen through our law? We might have missed it in the memories because Heaven and Earth had taken care of that part for Lord Lewis."

"That sounds quite hopeful," King Elbas commented. "I'd rather not approach the breakthrough blindly."

"Me neither," Noah snorted, "But what can we do? I have an idea on how to improve our understanding of the matter, but it's a bit problematic to deploy."

"Here we go again," King Elbas sighed, but Noah quickly straightened his position and revealed how his eyes had already lit up.

"Listen to this," Noah announced. "What if we go hunting for rank 9 cultivators to repeat this procedure? Getting those who don't belong to Heaven and Earth should even be better, and we can use the dragons to track down targets."

"Isn't that a special ability of the life dragon?" King Elbas commented. "Doesn't it only apply to dragons?"

"We can always create something ourselves to hunt down other rank 9 cultivators and steal their experience," Noah revealed.

King Elbas didn't know what to answer to that suggestion. Noah knew exactly how powerful his group was. He was aware that cultivators who didn't give up on their laws would have a high chance to defeat them.

Noah knew how reckless his plan sounded, but he would hate to arrive at the breakthrough unprepared, especially when the matter could endanger his potential. His centers of power even required far more energy than other experts, so he would probably have to struggle a lot to reach the ninth rank.

Noah and King Elbas continued to throw ideas at each other, but they couldn't reach reasonable conclusions due to the lack of data. The hypothesis that their laws had an important part in the breakthrough seemed the only accurate guess, but it also felt rather obvious after they inspected the matter multiple times.

The environment inside the dark world was so peaceful that the experts almost forgot where they were, but the outsides didn't wait too long before reminding them about the battlefield.

Noah suddenly sensed a foreign existence piercing the dark world and threatening to crash on Steven and Robert. He quickly used the dark matter and his understanding of space to move everyone toward a safe spot of the technique, but intense shockwaves soon ran through the darkness and shattered the higher energy.

The world reappeared in their vision and revealed how the battle had unfolded. The weaker dragons were still busy fighting the swarm controlled by cultivators, but the fight among the leaders showed a sharp change.

The solid stage woman was still high in the sky with part of the shining swarm of c.o.c.kroaches around her, but her opponents had diminished. Noah and the others only saw three dragons around her. The death dragon had fallen to the surface and had destroyed the dark world in the process.