The fusion was complete, but Noah's lungs needed some time to adapt to the changes in their structure and learn how to activate their new innate ability.
Noah couldn't even test his organs for the time being. He couldn't know if the forging were a success until his lungs stabilized.
However, his dark matter took care of them, and the incubators didn't affect Noah's lifestyle. It was harder to breathe with his lungs in that condition, but he didn't need air to survive.
Noah could only wait and hope that his dark matter would take care of any flaws in his new organs. He felt quite optimistic about the whole fusion, but his eagerness to test his new power made him impatient.
Luckily for Noah, he had plenty of things to do. He had completed all his projects, but there was still a world to save. He could also spend more time training since the packs on the surface needed to reallocate their forces to occupy the now empty lands.
The world was still too damaged to endure harsh battles. Noah would have to slowly kill all the rank 6 creatures until the net of cracks started to close before he could test his limits.
That strategy would be even easier if Noah let the magical beast fill the lands he had cleared. He wouldn't need to resort to baits if the Snakes began to separate on their own.
The desire for a larger lair was an innate instinct in the magical beasts. Noah was sure that the two remaining packs in the old continent would become thinner after some of their specimens moved in the Utra nation.
Noah trained for a while without losing track of the passage of time. A few decades went by, and his power slightly improved in those years.
His dantian continued to approach the peak of the liquid stage while his body grew quickly due to the many preys that he had hunted in the last years.
It had never happened in a lower plane that a magical beast or a hybrid could improve their bodies so quickly. Yet, Noah had already done something similar, and the current situation with the Eternal Snakes could only benefit him even more.
His greatest advantage was that his battle prowess allowed him to hunt prey on a higher level than his body. He didn't have limits now that the lack of suitable targets wasn't an issue anymore.
Noah decided to come out of the separate dimension after fifty years spent training. His lungs were still inside the incubators made of dark matter, but he felt that the modifications were almost complete.
His mission was the main reason behind his decision to interrupt his training. He had to save the world to survive. He didn't expect to ascend in the next centuries.
The net of cracks had continued to expand in those years, but Noah felt glad to see that the destruction of the world had slowed down. It seemed that his hunts had finally brought some results.
Noah tried to calculate how much the world had left before the void swept it, but that field was outside his capabilities. He could only guess that he had gained a few decades after his hunts.
'I still have three hundred years, according to Shandal's evaluation,' Noah thought as he inspected the sky. 'I don't plan on fixing this problem in more than that.'
Noah flew toward the old continent after he gave up on evaluating the state of the world. The packs there had behaved as he had predicted. Some of the weaker specimens had migrated to the Utra nation to create a third pack.
The migration didn't involve only the creatures in the old continent. Some Snakes from the other landmass decided to move toward a less crowded area. A few even decided to venture through the sea since it was mostly empty.
Noah didn't do anything reckless. The fauna's changes had revealed to him that the packs were quite easy-going when it came to the migration of a few specimens. They didn't incur any punishment from the leaders.
Part of the mindset developed in the Immortal Lands still occupied the Eternal Snakes' minds. Those creatures were far stronger than beasts on the same level due to their previous environment, but their aggression couldn't compare with those living in a lower plane since birth.
On a purely evolutionary aspect, magical beasts that had grown in a lower plane would find it easier to survive. Instead, the heroic creatures in the Immortal Lands had never suffered from a shortage of food, so they didn't learn what it could mean to let go of one of their underlings.
The Eternal Snakes were slowly learning the true meaning of hunger. Noah was sure that their instincts told them to keep a low profile due to the state of the world, but a war among those packs was imminent.
Noah took his time to clear the sea again and hunt the creatures in the Utra nation through baits and sudden attacks. His kill count quickly rose to fifty-six, but the world still didn't show any progress.
'I can either wait or cause a mess,' Noah concluded after he reviewed his options.
The remaining Eternal Snakes had many underlings, and there was a limit to how much Noah's baits could work. He didn't fear jumping right in the middle of those packs, but the condition of the world worried him.
He couldn't let too many rank 6 existences clash. That could only enlarge the cracks and bring the world closer to its destruction. Yet, he didn't want to wait for some creatures to occupy the free lands either.
Noah couldn't decide which was the best course of action, so he returned to his training. The incubators were about to open anyway. He could think about that issue only after he had tested his new innate ability.
Something strange happened while Noah was in the separate dimension. Golden lines rose from the seabed and created tall pillars of light that touched the sky and created a second net.
The second net was golden, and it covered the pieces of the sky that the void had yet to take. It was as if a dome had suddenly appeared to protect the entire world!
Noah overlooked that event while he was inside the separate dimension. Still, he wouldn't have paid attention to it anyway because the layers of protection around his lungs had finally broken in that period.
The incubators made of dark matter opened, and his body reabsorbed the higher energy. Noah could finally start to breathe properly again, but his eagerness to test made him ignore that detail.
Noah came out of the separate dimension in a hurry, but he remained speechless when he saw the golden net that had appeared in the sky.
He couldn't fail to recognize that golden light. That was the iconic color of the Elbas family, and there was no one else in the world capable of such a feat.
That event confirmed that the Elbas family had remained in the lower plane and worked on something that could fix the world. The golden net had that exact purpose. It forced the various pieces of the sky to remain in one place and make it harder for the instabilities to affect them.