"You have a unique law," Radiant Eyes said from inside the giant. "What price did you have to pay to perform these resurrections? What's your drawback?"
"There are no drawbacks," Great Builder explained from inside the pyramid. "I'm nothing more than an expert with the right tools. Living beings become quite easy to understand after you study millions of them."
Noah felt grateful to Great Builder, but the current situation didn't allow him to feel at ease. He had come back to life only to find himself between two rank 9 experts ready to fight.
The pyramid began to tremble before Noah could think about anything else. The white halo retracted and gathered into a vertical line that cut the structure in half.
Noah's instincts screamed, but he had nowhere to run. The entire army couldn't move with those two existences controlling the edges of the battlefield.
The pyramid suddenly opened. Its bricks started to separate from the main structure and reveal its insides. The various corridors and rooms became visible to everyone in the area, and a shining figure soon appeared at their center.
A middle-aged man with long white hair and no beard floated among the flying bricks. His white aura spread in every corner of the region, and a heavy pressure accompanied his show of power.
Noah could sense that the aura was heavy, but that power didn't apply any pressure on his mind. It even shielded him from the white sky and protected him from the shockwaves released by the pyramid.
"It has been too long!" Great Builder shouted as his aura expanded.
His hair fluttered in the wind generated by his figure. His overwhelming might spread violently through the regions and seeped into all the matter around him.
Great Builder's influence didn't trigger any reaction in the matter. It simply seeped inside it and became part of its fabric. It seemed that the expert was limiting himself to taint those materials.
Noah quickly inspected his body. His ambition even surged to empower his mind and give him a better understanding of what had happened.
The inspection didn't amount to anything. Noah couldn't find anything strange in his centers of power. Everything was as it was before the battle against the bees, except for his acc.u.mulated energy.
"Heaven and Earth!" Great Builder shouted while spreading his arms and looking toward the sky. "I came back! Did you miss me?"
His taunts seemed to trigger something in the sky. White sparks acc.u.mulated high above him and threatened to launch attacks carrying power that Noah couldn't even understand.
The sparks gathered to generate an intense crackling noise. Everyone in the area understood that a massive lightning bolt was about to fall on Great Builder, but the expert soon lost interest in that event.
The bricks around Great Builder began to arrange themselves in a different shape. They took the form of a huge cannon that pointed at the sky. Its muzzle even lit up to announce the arrival of an attack.
The lightning bolt eventually fell, but the cannon didn't hesitate to fire back. Two attacks wielding insane might clashed mid-air and exploded, generating intense destructive shockwaves that spread through the nearby regions.
Noah and the others wanted to escape, but their situation prevented them from moving. Still, Great Builder's white aura protected them from any shockwave or tremor that tried to reach their position.
The white sphere launched by the cannon and the lightning bolt exploded. They carried the same amount of power, so the attacks ended up destroying each other.
Heaven and Earth didn't want the tribulation to end and gathered even more sparks, but Great Builder acted faster than the sparks. His cannon shot again, and an explosion happened in the sky.
The Tribulation dispersed after the last attack, but Heaven and Earth's influence surrounded Great Builder anyway. Sparks soon began to acc.u.mulate around him and converge toward his figure. Heaven and Earth had marked him as an enemy of the world again.
Great Builder snorted, and a series of lines ran through his body. That technique quickly hid his presence and prevented his aura from triggering Heaven and Earth's punishment. The expert had developed something similar to Noah's spell.
"They are always so unforgiving," Great Builder commented while shrugging his shoulders. "I've only come back to life. It's not a big deal."
"Are you done?" Radiant Eyes snorted from inside the giant. "Can we fight already?"
"Sure, sure," Great Builder laughed. "Forgive me. It feels great to be back. I didn't think I would have missed this cursed life so much."
Radiant Eyes stopped speaking and decided to begin her offensive. The giant waved its hand, and a trail of scarlet light flew toward Great Builder.
The army between the two rank 9 experts could only remain still in front of that massive discharge of power, but Great Builder took care of protecting them.
White light ran through the ground and gave birth to shining plants covering the army with their branches. Those trees seemed able to block any shockwave running through the area. They were the perfect shield for those weaker existences.
The trail of scarlet light continued to fly toward Great Builder, but the expert snapped his fingers and surrounded himself with a white halo. The area transformed under those influences, and the laws of the world stopped working properly.
The air went through different transformations. Great Builder's influence rearranged its laws until it gave birth to a series of phantom-like living beings. Then, Radiant Eyes' aura tainted those creatures and made them grow insect wings.
The white radiance took over. It reassembled those corrupted living beings until they became humanoid figures that didn't carry insect features.
The scarlet aura then regained control over that area and applied its transformations again. The two experts didn't even touch themselves, but their auras were able to influence the whole world.
The space around the exchange twisted and transformed. Tiny living beings appeared around the duo as their auras struggled to win against their opponent. Wings soon grew behind their back, but a second series of modifications arrived before they could leave the area.
'He should have the power to send us away,' Noah thought while memorizing every aspect of the battle. 'He has chosen to let us witness the fight to teach us something.'
Noah could see through Great Builder's scheme, and he ended up appreciating him even more after that discovery. The expert had given his group the chance to study experts at the peak of the cultivation journey.
Great Builder and Radiant Eyes never touched each other. They never sent massive attacks of specific techniques aimed to kill their opponent in one blow. Instead, they studied their power to see if their existences had an advantage in the battle.
Great Builder mostly laughed. His white halo never stopped to shine, and his cannons soon transformed into a series of smaller rifles that shot bullets made of condensed light.
The leftovers of the pyramid could also become something else, but Great Builder didn't need them. He was still in the process of studying Radiant Eyes' aura, so he didn't dare to reveal all his techniques.
"Enough with these games," Radiant Eyes eventually sighed.
She didn't want to interrupt her transformation again, but Great Builder seemed strong enough to defend himself. He even appeared capable of overpowering her through the divided pyramid.