Birth of the Demonic Sword

Gratia couldn't explain what was happening. Noah was clearly using multiple abilities, but the sole fact that his blows could match hers left her stunned.

The difference between the eighth and the ninth rank was immense, but Noah touched the liquid stage with his abilities. That wasn't something that the world could allow. The very meaning of the ranks, tiers, and stages would disappear otherwise.

Still, Gratia couldn't deny what she was witnessing. Noah's assets didn't even reach the liquid stage. His companions remained in the lower tier and his attacks in the gaseous stage in terms of sheer power, but he could face her on an even field.

Noah's aura was the main problem in that battle. It could make his attacks very effective against Gratia's abilities and turn even a weak attack into a force that she had to take seriously. Moreover, it was unclear whether that was a temporary boost. She could sense his ambition, but everything else was part of his existence. His anger, hunger, greed, and destruction were aspects that had become strong enough to affect rank 9 experts.

The sky around them had started to fall apart after the many exchanges. Noah opened massive cracks whenever he used his movement technique, and his destruction only enlarged those passages to the void. Gratia even used Heaven and Earth's light to empower her attacks, so the area grew weaker whenever she absorbed light.

"Nonsense!" Gratia shouted when she saw a straight slash piercing her beams and forcing her to dodge.

A crack opened at her side, and she instinctively turned to generate a blinding explosion. Noah materialized behind her, but he quickly sprinted again when he saw that Gratia had predicted his attack.

Another crack opened on her other side, but she used her free hand to create a blinding explosion there too. Noah had to sprint above her, and fire accumulated in his mouth before he released a fiery wave of blackness that mixed with his dark matter to maximize its destructive power.

The flames burnt Gratia's light, but the halo that seeped out of her figure eventually pierced that energy and shattered it. She shone with the full power of her cultivation level as she placed a hand on her right elbow while pointing her right palm at her opponent.

Noah's instincts roared, and the world in his vision soon took the shape of the space-time array, but a wall of light hit him before he could perform his sprint. Large wounds appeared on his body as blood came out from his eyes, mouth, ears, and nostrils. His flesh felt the need to fall apart, but a sea of dark matter filled the area before Gratia could aim another attack at him.

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Gratia snorted, and the sole pressure generated by her voice made the dark world fall apart. The expert rolled her eyes when she saw an army of six-armed dragons surrounding her, but she couldn't do anything to stop the imminent explosion.

A storm of dense dark matter engulfed her and filled her figure with black lines. Gratia prepared herself to shine again, but she suddenly felt something moving at high speed among the higher energy.

Gratia interrupted her technique to aim her palm at the faint movements that she sensed among the dark matter, and multiple beams flew through the black storm as she tried to hit that fast shadow. The opponent drew near, but one of her attacks eventually managed to pierce its chest and clear the area in that spot.

The dark matter fell apart to reveal a fiendish armor dispersing among the invading whiteness of the sky. That figure was pure energy and didn't contain anyone, which immediately made Gratia think about a decoy.

Her guess turned out to be on point since multiple fiendish armors and six-armed dragons suddenly punched at her from the darkness. They were about to discharge the full power of lower tier magical beasts on her, but her skin became blinding before they could reach their target.

The black storm and the army dispersed, but a shadow survived her attack. Gratia couldn't even inspect it since that dark dot disappeared as soon as her eyes managed to notice it. Her left arm separated from her body an instant later before vanishing without leaving any trace.

Light came out of Gratia's severed limb and created an ethereal white arm while she glanced high in the sky. Anger appeared on her face when she saw Noah taking bloody bites out of her severed arm while a huge Pterodactyl sat on his head.

Night had managed to sever the light defending the insides of Gratia's body due to the black lines that had accumulated during the explosion of the dragon army. Noah could absorb that energy and heal the injuries that her previous attack had inflicted.

Of course, Noah could use the dark matter to absorb the arm and the energy inside it. The process would even be smoother like that, but he wanted to intensify the monstrous aura that surrounded him, and he succeeded in his plan.

Gratia couldn't help but experience fear for the first time since the beginning of the battle when glancing at that scene. Noah was among the whiteness, but his sole presence could darken the powerful light that gave her power. His icy-blue reptilian eyes shone with bloodthirsty power as they stared at their opponent, and blood fell from his mouth as he ate the severed arm.

The rank 8 aura that Noah radiated only increased the defiant power that he seemed able to wield. He was weak. The very labels of the world told Gratia that Noah was weak. However, he was there, staring at her from a higher spot in the sky, and she couldn't make him step down.

Gratia opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes widened when a dangerous sensation spread inside her. Defenses that she had prepared a long time ago activated to counter the Shadow Domain, but no explosions happened. Instead, she felt something slithering in her insides and piercing the light that had to protect her.

Black roots suddenly pierced her abdomen and tainted her robe with a dark-purple toxin liquid. Patches that carried similar shades appeared everywhere on her figure as those branches of the parasite continued to feed on her flesh and aura. They had become incredibly effective after Noah had eaten her arm, so she struggled to suppress them.

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The dark world expanded again and suppressed Gratia even more. She saw her efforts to get rid of the parasite slowing down before an army of dragons detonated around her.

Black lines covered her figure, and the roots didn't hesitate to exploit them. Gratia felt on the verge of falling apart. She would die if that trend continued, so she decided to rip away her entire abdomen.

Roots and blood spread in the sky as Gratia made her light explode in specific spots of her body. Her torso transformed into a gory mess, and everything worsened when a crack connected to the void opened before her.

Gratia immediately began to shine with blinding light to protect herself from the incoming attack, but a path opened among her halo. Night severed the light and created a passage where Noah could release his slash.

The expert almost couldn't believe her eyes when she saw her figure splitting in half as a diagonal black line passed through her.