Birth of the Demonic Sword

The Royal Metal was quite peculiar as a material. It changed its shape according to the individuality poured inside it, and it crumbled once it obtained a complete meaning.

It was also incredibly sturdy. Noah recalled how no one in the group of experts had managed to seize shards of the metal from the black landmass. The pieces in his possession came from one of the giant's attacks.

Night's innate ability made it transform into darkness whenever it attacked. Its structure interacted with laws during its assaults, and the task required its strange body to work correctly.

Noah found replicating that ability quite hard. He had succeeded after many tests, but he always felt that he couldn't quite express Night's true potential with the previous bodies.

The dark matter did its best in aiding Night's innate skills, but the Royal Metal could bring those abilities to a superior level. The only problem was the self-destructive behavior of the material.

For the first time in his life, Noah had to mess with the laws inside materials for the forgings.

The Royal Metal didn't bend or break, but Noah didn't need to modify its shape. His focus was on its fabric, and he spent months identifying the laws that triggered the unwanted effects.

Flawed raw laws made that material. Their goal was to search for meanings, and Noah had every intention to satisfy their wish, but he wanted to remove their annoying after-effect.

Identifying his targets didn't give Noah the ability to remove them. He didn't have the power to cut through the Royal Metal, so he couldn't cut away those laws either.

Yet, he knew a particular creature with spectacular piercing abilities, which could improve the final product if it spread its darkness inside the Royal Metal.

"You want to create a series of bodies that I have to destroy to get the final one?" Night asked when Noah told it about his plan.

The Night-blade Pterodactyls were spectacular when it came to affecting laws. Night had managed to destroy formations' cores while ignoring every defense when it was only a small bird. It could do the same for the Royal Metal with the right body.

The Pterodactyl was nothing more than a huge empty head, but it analyzed the black spikes that Noah had laid on the ground with great interest.

Noah didn't need to point out the exact laws that it had to cut away. His mental connection with the creature was enough to give it a target. The only problem was whether Night could pierce the metal.

"I will need twenty bodies to complete the task," Night eventually said. "I've never seen this material before. I will destroy part of me every time I enter its fabric."

"What are you willing to do for the perfect body?" Noah asked while wearing a smirk, and Night didn't hesitate anymore.

The two of them began a long project that saw Noah building good bodies only for the Pterodactyl to destroy them whenever it attacked the spikes.

Noah didn't deplete precious materials since Night's bodies only required dark matter. Still, he couldn't hold back on their qualities since the creature wouldn't be able to cross the metal otherwise.

The project consumed a lot of time, but Noah soon optimized the forging process with the dark world. Night also attacked while inside it to improve its piercing ability.

Night managed to remove the last of the unwanted laws from the spikes after destroying sixteen bodies that had the power of the sixth rank.

Experts would go crazy if they heard those numbers, but Noah had long since stopped considering rank 6 resources important. Only top-tier resources and divine items could interest him.

The black spikes fell apart after Night attacked their fabric. They became a thin sand-like material that carried a faint trace of the Pterodactyl's aura.

Noah felt delighted with that outcome, and he began the construction for Night's final body immediately.

To make Night able to grow, Noah had to infuse part of the dark matter with meanings retrieved from its consciousness. The Pterodactyl didn't follow other magical beasts' normal anatomy, so he had to use specific instincts to make his higher energy behave as if it was Night's original body.

The process took a long time since Noah had to wait for Night's consciousness to recover after he forged a part of dark matter. He had applied the theory of the Will-consuming runes on the Pterodactyl.

Then, he forged the sand-like material with the infused dark matter to create a ten meters tall body that had wings capable of covering a fourteen meters large area.

Of course, the body carried the characteristics of the Night-blade Pterodactyls. It only had edges and didn't have any organs. Still, the Royal Metal had fused with its fabric, so it wasn't only dark matter anymore.

Noah ultimately fused Night's consciousness with its new body, and the creature soon tested its abilities.

"It feels strangely comfortable," Night commented after it flew for a while. It had even gone in its breeding area to test its innate ability, and the results left it quite amazed.

"I don't feel any resistance when I attack," Night said in an excited tone. "I can transform faster, and I feel lighter even if I can sense that the body is heavier. I can even feed on the darkness that I create!"

Night couldn't contain its excitement, but Noah limited himself to flag another project as completed. With all his companions taken care of, there were only a few things left to finish.

The runes immersed in his mental sea were useful assets that Noah had to pair with martial arts to make them suitable for his species. He also had to complete Sword Saint's training, but he wasn't sure that it had an end.

The strange diagram that he had retrieved from Shandal's separate dimension had yet to react to his energies, so Noah didn't spend much time analyzing it.

Instead, the other reward became far more tempting now that his body was about to reach the middle tier.

Noah suppressed the faint hunger that had appeared in that period and focused on pushing his body and dantian toward the next level.

It was better to rely on the winged creature's remains when his body's requirements reached levels that he couldn't satisfy with the world's resources.

His dantian didn't have the same problems, and it advanced in the liquid stage a few years before he hit the one thousand years mark. Noah had spent only a bit more than a century in the gaseous stage, but the raw laws had benefited his growth in ways that surprised even him.

Advancing in the liquid stage didn't make his dark matter change. The dark hole in his chest became able to amass more energy and purify nutrients better, but its functions remained the same.

The sudden breakthrough made Noah the strongest expert in the Hive, and the other powerhouses in the organization pressed him to hold an official ceremony to announce the event.

The Demons and Elder Julia wanted him to take the role of Patriarch even if he wouldn't handle any political matter. They only wanted Noah to become the face of the Hive.

Noah didn't mind that task. His job would be to defend the Hive and deal with other significant problems, which were almost non-existent in that period of peace.

He would have to make decisions regarding worldwide events, but his mindset was perfect for an organization like the Hive.

In his mind, Noah had already accepted that role, but he wanted to complete another task before appearing in public to announce that event.

His body was at the peak of the lower tier, but it required valuable resources to breakthrough. Noah didn't want to use the winged beast now, but there were powerful creatures in the world that could provide what he needed.