Chapter 1852 - 1852. Intermediate

"Who is paranoid now?" Noah snorted, but the pressure released by his voice triggered traps hidden in the air in front of him.

Cracks opened and released their half-transparent lightning bolts. Yet, Noah was still under the effects of his empowerment. The attacks engulfed him only to burn into a wave of dense black flames.​​

"What the f-," Wilfred said, but cracks opened in the air in front of him before he could complete his phrase.

Everything had happened too quickly. Noah had triggered four different traps in less than a second, which didn't give time to his companions to understand the nature of the situation. Wilfred felt unable to summon enough power to launch an attack capable of stopping the incoming wave of lightning bolts, but a black mass suddenly appeared in front of him.

Noah had triggered multiple traps when he shot toward Wilfred, and they all released lightning bolts that aimed at him. The power contained in thirteen different attacks in the ninth rank fused to create something that Noah couldn't stop without showing his real might.

Bloodl.u.s.t quickly expanded from his figure before two vertical black slashes cut through the dense wave of lightning bolts and created an opening where he could be safe. Wilfred didn't hold back from exploiting that opening, and his large arms soon started to move to generate an attack meant to support Noah.

"Don't do it!" Noah ordered when he sensed Wilfred acc.u.mulating his energy behind him. "You'll only set off every trap in the area!"

The soundwaves generated by Noah's shout and the dense power acc.u.mulated while Wilfred prepared his technique ended up opening new cracks in the air and ground. Countless lightning bolts shot toward the duo, but Noah promptly pointed his blades downward and stabbed the azure terrain as his consciousness expanded.

The experts in his ground sensed an intense wave of danger surrounding them, but the familiar source of that sensation made them relax and stay still. Countless slashes materialized around them just an instant after the arrival of that feeling, and everything in the area grew dark.

The light that managed to seep past the storms scattered the darkness and revealed how the area had changed after Noah's attack. A large chunk of the site had disappeared and had created a large flat pit under the group. Moreover, the air around him had completely disappeared, and the fabric of space had also turned into broken pieces divided by large cracks connected to the void.

An orange halo still lingered in the area even after Noah's massive attack, but everything converged toward him as the black hole fed on that energy.

Everything grew calm at that point. Noah had understood that the traps existed in a different dimension during the initial exchanges, so he had decided to use his knowledge of space to shatter the entire area with his attacks.

"You got lucky," King Elbas complained. "You didn't sense anything more than we did."

"It's not luck," Noah announced. "I simply believe in my constant lack of luck."

"It still doesn't make your paranoia right," King Elbas insisted.

"Forget it," Noah sighed before pointing at the city with the Demonic Sword. "Why can't we sense them?"

The other experts carefully walked toward the edges of the pit to inspect their surroundings. They prepared abilities that could fend off eventual lightning bolts, but their actions didn't trigger anything. It seemed that Noah's power had spread past the actual destruction currently shown by the area.

Some faint gales came out of the storms that surrounded the dead zone and fused with the sky to heal the many cracks opened by Noah's attack. The chaotic laws didn't rebuild the fabric of space casually either. Invisible energy guided their movements and rebuilt the area according to specific arrays.

Everyone in the group noticed that strange behavior, but only Noah, King Elbas, and Alexander understood how odd that was. After all, the invisible energy wasn't existing in their dimension. It was somewhere else, in a place that their minds couldn't reach.

The event left Noah completely speechless. The Shadow Domain could deploy similar effects, but that was one of the best techniques in the world. Its very nature put it among the most dangerous and complicated abilities that had ever appeared on the Immortal Lands.

Still, the dead zone in front of him seemed to have similar properties. Noah felt as if a wall tried to block his mental waves when he attempted to inspect the insides of the closing cracks, but his senses managed to gather information anyway. He found a slim layer right under the fabric that divided the higher plane from the void. That structure created a dimension that could affect the world without leaving traces of its power.

The discovery was incredible. Noah couldn't even begin to imagine how long it would take to create such an intermediate dimension and fill it with energy capable of affecting the chaotic laws. He only knew two experts who could give him a better explanation, but the latter was as surprised as him.

"This structure is incredible," King Elbas announced as his curiosity seeped out of his figure. "We should destroy the entire area and take it."

"No one is destroying anything," Noah ordered.

"You just destroyed this area," Robert sneered while raising his hand to show that he had already created a threatening mass. "You can't blame us if we break the path toward the city."

"No one is destroying anything randomly!" King Elbas shouted. "We need to preserve the dimension attached to the world."

"Luckily you have the best experts in special dimensions here," Divine Demon stated while pointing his hand toward the closing cracks before showing a confident smile. "Unless someone wants to challenge me for this title."

"Steven?" Wilfred asked, and the latter promptly took a step back.

"Don't even try to throw me at him," Steven complained.

"Someone must feed the beast," Alexander sighed while shaking his head. "That poor existence has starved for many years already."

"Why would you use me then?" Steven continued to complain. "Just make him fight the ground. I bet he'll challenge the very surface if he could."

Divine Demon's eyes inevitably fell toward the azure terrain as his hand rose to scratch his chin. The ground had gained an appealing aura after that suggestion, but Wilfred promptly placed a jug of wine in his line of sight.

"Don't give him ideas!" Alexander scolded before heaving a sigh of relief when he saw that the wine won against the ground.

"I just need to preserve what's behind the world's fabric, right?" Sword Saint asked before pointing his hand toward a spot high in the sky. "That might actually be interesting."

"Wait!" King Elbas exclaimed. "I need to perform calculations, study the area, the density, the types of materials, and-."

King Elbas had to stop giving voice to his list since a sharp beam came out of Sword Saint's stretched fingers and created an incredibly long blade that pierced the world's fabric in a spot high in the sky. The attack didn't even vanish after the event. It remained in its place and connected the expert to the whiteness.

"You can stop no-," King Elbas tried to stop Sword Saint again, but a wave of sharpness suddenly spread from the tip of its long sharp pillar.

Sword Saint's sharpness spread through the world's fabric until it created a square among the sky. Cracks opened at the edges of the precise shape and filled its insides before shattering everything.

A dark scene unfolded in the group's eyes as Sword Saint removed a huge chunk of the sky. The hidden dimension became clear at that point, but a few peculiar features in that image left them speechless. Noah and the others found different rank 9 magical beasts tied to that structure.

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Author's notes: Working hard on the third here. I'm really slow today for some reason. I guess having to add details and stuff is slowing me down. The third will come in max one hour.