Noah had absorbed many nutrients when his flames ravaged the insides of the underground area. He had enough energy to fix his chest and improve, but he needed time to regrow those parts.
His flames made his recovery quicker. Noah burned part of the environment in the regions near the tall tree to heal faster. Luckily for him, the two rank 8 moles had stopped following him after he disappeared in the sky.
"Does your ambition multiply magical beasts now?" Fergie asked once Noah met him in his cave near the Foolery's domain.
"Not yet," Noah replied, revealing a cold smile toward his underling.
Fergie heaved a helpless sigh before taking something out of his space-ring. The tall tree's yellowish fruit appeared in his grasp, and the energy it contained filled the whole cave.
Its scent also seeped into the outside world and attracted the magical beasts in the area. Those creatures madly charged toward the cave, but black flames soon engulfed them. Noah took care of the threat before it could even reach them.
"I had to take it before it was fully ripe," Fergie explained once Noah returned to the cave. "I waited as much as possible, but everything fell into chaos when the second rank 8 mole appeared."
"You did good," Noah replied before seizing the fruit.
The fruit was as large as a man's chest. It had a spherical shape, but lines divided it into eight parts. Noah took out his white blade and cut it, giving a quarter of the resource to his underling.
"I have such a greedy leader," Fergie commented.
"I had to face rank 8 creatures," Noah replied. "Consider yourself lucky."
"Your loyal follower doesn't dare to complain any further," Fergie added in a mocking tone before retreating toward a corner of the cave.
Noah left the area to return to his cave. The recent battle had brought decent benefits, and he couldn't wait to experiment on them.
Once Noah reached his temporary habitation, he deployed the dark world and resumed the creation of darkness for Night. The Pterodactyl had already reached the upper tier, but he wanted to push its power even further.
After spending some time training, Noah took out the fruit from his separate space and bit it. An intense wave of energy flowed inside him and forced the black hole to work at full power to purify it. That small bite already contained more energy than all the magical beasts burned during the battle.
'Don't tell me that this can become a rank 8 resource once it's fully ripe,' Noah thought as he inspected the fruit.
It was impossible to let the fruit grow unless Noah could fend off the various rank 8 threats. The tall tree may produce far more valuable resources, but the other creatures would stop it due to their greed.
A few plans formed in Noah's mind as he consumed the fruit, but they quickly crumbled. He had already seen how powerful rank 8 creatures could be. His current battle prowess didn't allow him to deploy any feasible strategy.
'It would be easier with the Foolery,' Noah thought before moving his focus toward a different project.
His body was full of energy that the black hole continued to purify before allowing his tissues to absorb it. Any magical beast or normal hybrid would see their power increase after that wave of power, but Noah only experienced a slight growth.
That event didn't surprise Noah, especially after witnessing how powerful existences in the eighth rank were. The next breakthrough would elevate his whole being in ways that he had yet to comprehend fully.
'Snore,' Noah called his Blood Companion, and the giant reptilian head soon appeared at his side.
Snore opened its mouth, and a prison made of dark matter landed on the cave's floor. The shadow of the upper tier mole was inside it, but it didn't struggle as it did during the battle.
'Did it accept its situation?' Noah wondered before performing a series of inspections on the shadow.
He quickly confirmed that the creature was still alive, but he couldn't understand why it didn't react to his inspections. It remained still even when Noah pierced its strange body with his swords.
'Quite peculiar indeed,' Noah thought before considering a few hypotheses.
Noah had an idea that could explain that odd behavior. The moles seemed to have a tight connection with the breeding ground. In theory, their survival instincts could even depend on that dark cloud.
'Well, it's alive,' Noah thought before taking out a red crystal.
Noah would have to study those creatures in their natural habitat to learn more about their innate abilities. Still, that project was impossible at his current level.
The mole in its shadow form was hard to analyze. Its fabric contained laws that allowed it to transform into an actual magical beast, but Noah couldn't trigger that event. Even his pride didn't manage to force the creature.
It was clear that the beast had lost something when Noah separated it from the breeding ground, but he didn't mind it. He had finally obtained a creature with a darkness aptitude. It was time to test the crystals found in the Evolution Pit.
The Demonic Deduction technique could help in that process only at times. Noah wanted to create something meant for destruction, but his experiment forced him to think about a fusion first.
Since Noah had yet to understand how the mole worked, he couldn't make full use of the Demonic Deduction technique. He didn't even know which innate ability the creature had. He was almost approaching the experiment blindly.
From what Noah had seen on the battlefield, he could guess that the mole wouldn't turn into a blood companion that suited his logic-defying battle prowess. Still, he had put that off for too long, so he didn't care about the actual value of the beast anymore.
Noah only wanted to see how the red crystal worked. That material could become the key to improve his companions, so he wanted to test its power and decide whether he had to pursue that experiment.
The mole seized during the battle was in the upper tier, while Noah had only red crystals in the middle tier. Still, his ambition could force any material in the world to evolve.
Noah held the red crystal in his grasp as he closed his eyes. His ambition seeped out of his figure, but he forced it to focus on the mineral.
His influence had only temporary effects, but Noah believed that he could force them to become permanent. He only had to expose the red crystal for enough time to reach that result.
Noah spent weeks focusing his ambition on the red crystal. He often had to restart the process since the material began to lose power at some point. However, it eventually reached the point when its level didn't fall anymore.
The middle tier red crystal transformed into a material in the upper tier after weeks of nourishment under Noah's influence. His law had forced that material to evolve. Noah had replicated the same event that had happened during his battle with Lady Lena.
Noah didn't hesitate to fuse the crystal with the mole at that point. He didn't know which inscription method suited that procedure, so he relied on the workshop and the Elemental Forging method to be safe.
The red crystal melted and fused with the shadow through a simple meaning and a dense wave of dark matter, giving it a scarlet shade that often vanished in its blackness.
Initially, the mole didn't show any change, but a transformation eventually occurred. The shadow convulsed as smoke came out of its fabric and gave birth to a small version of the breeding ground that Noah had seen in the underground area.