Birth of the Demonic Sword

Noah took many breaks to dispel the lingering emptiness that had started to fill his mind. He even made sure to focus on other fields for entire decades to ensure that his conclusions didn't come from the desperate desire to end that difficult process. Yet, the blueprint for his new center of power eventually took form, so the project moved toward its final phases.

It was time to start the actual creation of the center of power, which required a completely different training area. Noah had benefitted a lot from the restrictions and defenses of his former habitation. He would have failed to suppress many of his copies without them, but he needed something else now.

The new training area was a large circular room that had a conical hole at its center. The deep structure featured multiple steps with various inscriptions meant for different features, but Noah only cared about those that could increase the density of ethereal materials.

The core material for his ethereal center of power had to be his ambition. Noah had confirmed that during his first experiment, and his conclusions didn't change during the years spent with the other copies. The issue was gathering it in a pure and suitable form.

In theory, Noah still didn't have access to the right ambition meant to create the ethereal organ. His centers of power would normally need to reach the ninth rank and naturally fuse their energy to build the ethereal structure. However, he had to follow a completely different path, which started with making the core material with his own hands.

Noah had given a lot of thought to the matter and had eventually decided that replicating the normal breakthrough was only a waste of time. Taking his darkness, mental energy, dark matter, and primary energy, evolving them through his law, and fusing them felt pointless when he could directly improve his ambition.

The problem was that his ambition didn't technically exist as a proper force at his current level. It was an influence that could taint other materials and his energy, but it didn't have an actual shape.

Noah could think of a few methods that could allow him to isolate his ambition. Tainting a simple material and slowly destroying it with opposite laws before enveloping everything with his dark matter could work. Still, the old rulers could provide a specific training area for that, and he found no point refusing it.

The inscriptions on the steps of the conical hole lit up when Noah approached them, but he only moved and activated those involved with his project. He didn't recognize most of those orange lines, but the old rulers had given him a detailed description of their functions, so preparing them for the process ended up being relatively easy.

Noah immersed himself inside the hole after everything was ready. He never touched its bottom. He floated in a cross-legged position right in its middle as the inscriptions around him activated and applied their effects on his existence.

The inscriptions could be gentle, but Noah directly made them apply their most invasive approach. He knew that his existence would oppose the procedure, so going through multiple tests to find a balance between pain and efficiency sounded like a waste of time. It was better to go all-out once and put an end to that phase of the project.

Tentacles made of orange light shot out of the inscriptions and entangled themselves to Noah's figure. They transformed into cylindrical tubes that applied an intense suction force once they completely covered him. Immense pain immediately filled his mind, but he didn't scream nor roar. His cold eyes even remained open as he fixed his gaze at the bottom of the hole.

The suction force didn't affect his centers of power. Noah felt as if they ripped away from him something fainter and deeper. He felt weak as the process continued, and pitch-black drops of a dense liquid started to flow from the tubes' bases.

The process was stealing Noah's potential, the same energy that he used to apply the effects of his ambition. He could feel the power accumulated after defeating opponents far stronger than him leaving his body and disappearing from his existence. He would have even forgotten about his achievements if he didn't protect those specific memories during the process.

A black puddle slowly formed at the bottom of the hole as the process continued. Noah suppressed the pain until his potential was on the verge of depleting before interrupting the inscriptions. The tubes disappeared at that point, and he shot out of the structure in a hurry.

The weakness that had filled his existence made him lose control of his movements and crash on the training area's walls. Noah had the energy to stand, but his centers of power didn't want to work. They felt that he had to go through that moment on his own.

Noah didn't curse nor roar. His eyes soon open, and the ceiling became the main target of his cold gaze. That iconic gesture had intensified after the many years spent staring back at his dying copies, but no one could notify him about that detail. He only felt that he was natural to wear that expression.

The memories that the inscriptions had tried to rip away from his existence started to flow through his vision. Noah reviewed his many incredible achievements many times, and potential eventually built inside his being again.

The inscriptions could separate Noah from his potential, but his existence had earnt it through blood and efforts. Simply taking it wasn't enough to leave him without it. His law knew that he deserved more, so it gave more as Noah reminded it of what he had accomplished throughout his life.

Noah felt able to move again after his ambition restored his potential. However, he still decided to spend a few months cultivating in silence and reaffirming his determination before going back into the hole and repeating the process. A single extraction of that energy wasn't enough to satisfy the insane requirements that Noah had come up with after experimenting with the copies. He needed to remain in that area for a while.

The companions were the only witnesses of Noah's struggles. They even shared part of his emotions, and their bodies shook whenever they experienced what he went through. The cycle of pain and weakness continued for many years, and he didn't stop even after the black liquid filled the hole. He needed more than he had ever amassed in his entire life for that project.

Needless to say, the continuous extraction and refill of his potential eventually lowered what the ambition could recreate. Noah sensed that he lost part of that energy from time to time, even if his memories remained intact. Still, he didn't mind that too much. Even his existence allowed that weakening of his potential peak due to the importance of that project.

The training area offered multiple containers capable of storing that dense material, but Noah didn't trust the old rulers enough to rely on them even when it came to those tools. His dark matter could easily take care of the matter, and that phase of the experiments soon ended.

Noah had everything at that point. It was time to create the actual ethereal center of power and fuse with it.

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Author's notes: I definitely made you wait for this milestone. Thank you for the 1900 chapters spent together! I'm writing the right now, so one hour or two for its release.