That sudden awareness gained from the Horned Horse allowed it to find a way out of Noah's incessant offensive. When Noah pulled the chains again, the hybrid used its innate ability to sprint even faster than before while covering its body with a layer of rocky armor.

Noah sidestepped the charge, but one of his four horns managed to stab his chest and leave a long horizontal injury as it went past him. Since he was still holding onto the inscribed chains, he started flying alongside the charging Horse.

'Did the chain just force it to suppress its mental instabilities?' Noah thought as he flew through the battlefield again as he kept his grasp on the inscribed item.

He didn't miss the flashes radiated by the chains while he was beating the creature, but he only managed to link them to the change in the behavior of his opponent now. It was as if they had forced it to regain its consciousness.

'Is it due to the absolute control that these bindings have once connected to a slave?' Noah pondered about that feature, but the Horned Horse had managed to stop its charge at that point and was waiting for him with its horns pointed straight at his flying figure.

Noah didn't hesitate to dive among the horns with his Demonic Sword pointed toward the center of its forehead. A series of rocky layers appeared in the trajectory of his weapon, but Noah completely disregarded them and continued to pour his darkness into the sword.

The Demonic Sword began to release black smoke that helped it pierce the defensive spell of the hybrid and stab its forehead. Yet, it didn't manage to reach the brain of the creature since its skull was too st.u.r.dy.

Of course, the battle would have ended far sooner if Noah used his spells, but he was trying to refill his mental sphere at the moment, and he didn't need them to defeat his opponent.

The Horse had just used three spells, which weren't even that effective against him. There was a limit to how much a sudden acceleration and an exploding armor could do to him after he had to face Countless Wings' strategy.

'It probably was a Flawed Human before the transformation.' Noah thought as he delivered a punch to pull the Demonic Sword from its skull. 'It doesn't have a great diversity of spells, and the platforms are just a trick that allows it to use its innate ability in the air.'

The Horse neighed in pain, but Noah interrupted its cry with another series of slashes. The corrosive smoke released by his Demonic Sword started to envelop its figure, but the rocky armor appeared again and forced him to break it with another series of attacks.

'Even someone so inexperienced can survive this long just because it's a hybrid,' Noah thought when he began to feel annoyed by the resilience of his opponent.

Strictly speaking, the Horned Horse wasn't strong, and it even fought poorly for a creature capable of complex thoughts. It had its sporadic moments of awareness when it managed to use its hybrid status to be threatening, but its lack of spells made it just a bit more resistant than a magical beast.

Its physical strength was above the average of its species, but Noah had fused himself with a dragon. The only beings that could surpa.s.s the qualities of his body were beasts that were specialized only in one field.

In the end, it was the same as in the other world. Noah had to face beings that were innately stronger than both magical beasts and humans, but with no idea how to use that power.

"We are ready!" A loud shout resounded from the ground at that point, and Noah's attention went there only to see a series of Elders of the Council messing with the inscribed chains. There were members of the Elbas family there too, and they wielded some strange kind of inscribed swords that they aimed at the links connected with the bottom of the fissures.

Every cultivator that was fighting with a hybrid retreated by a few steps after that warning and Noah wasn't an exception. Then, the Royals slashed their weapons at the links, which broke and fell apart.

The inscribed chains started to flicker madly and sent waves of pain to the creatures connected to them. The collars around the hybrids began to s.h.i.+ne too, which further worsened the pain that they felt.

The hybrids began to thrash their bodies around as they tried to suppress that intense sensation, but it did little effect. They continued to suffer until their sea of consciousness eventually broke and announced the death of those slaves.

Noah grabbed the corpse of the Horned Horse when it began to fall lifelessly toward the ground and opened its lower body to retrieve a s.h.i.+ning organ that had already started to disperse its energy. He then ate the dantian of the hybrid in the open again and stored the rest of the corpse.

That was still a creature in the fifth rank. Noah wouldn't throw anything away.

Another intense wave of energy filled his body and pushed its level further toward the peak of the middle tier. Even if the Horse had initially been a Flawed Human, it still had a dantian with power near the bottom of the gaseous stage of the fifth rank.

The battles resumed with even more vigor at that point.

The invading forces didn't regain the upper hand immediately. The shadows had disappeared, but they had suffered their fair share of losses due to the two consecutive defensive methods.

The rank 5 cultivators of the three forces though didn't seem disappointed by that outcome. Even if some of their powerful a.s.sets had died, they wouldn't have to face the hybrids again in the next battle. After all, it would be impossible for the Empire to refill its stash of slaves, with the three organizations unwilling to trade with it.

Noah resumed his wait to recover his mental energy and began to feed the Demonic Sword to give it a well-deserved meal.

After his victory against Countless Wings, the other cultivators of the Empire had understood that he was a dangerous variable in that war, and none of them wanted to abandon their battle to fight him. Even those that won against the invading forces would rather help some of their companions than challenge him in a one versus one fight.

The real issue was that Noah seemed always to surpa.s.s their expectations, which made the level of his battle prowess quite unclear.

Truth to be told, both Peaceful Storm and Countless Wings had been his opponents because of their suitable abilities, but they weren't among the strongest rank 5 cultivators in the gaseous stage in the world. Peaceful Storm had his acc.u.mulation of talismans, but his power was still lacking.

Then, just when the battle had resumed a regular course, seven castles lit up, and seven ma.s.sive giants formed in the sky.