A few experts and magical beasts had managed to seize part of the jellyfish's energy, but only Noah and King Elbas had managed to turn that power into breakthroughs.
The group couldn't help but stare at the newly advanced experts once they came out of the mansion. They almost couldn't believe that those relatively young existences had already caught up with them.
The Foolery ended up remaining the only member of the team that had yet to reach the solid stage. Its existence still required to make up for the many years spent with only one center of power, so its level remained in the liquid stage.
The pig had even inherited part of Noah's insane requirements after the transformation, so its share of the jellyfish's energy only managed to make it reach the peak of the liquid stage and middle tier.
The void creatures tried to assault the group as soon as the mansion returned inside King Elbas' space-ring, but Noah limited himself to wave his hand and fill the area with his sharpness.
Countless cuts appeared in the void whenever the blackness bent or something moved. The empty creatures couldn't get near the experts at all, which gave them time to decide their next move.
The experts were at their full power now. Their dantians had enough energy to sustain a long journey, but King Elbas still had to complete a few calculations that required him to consider their previous gains.
Stealing worlds was easy and barely required any energy, but the same didn't apply to fights against rank 9 creatures. Their situation would worsen if they found another powerful being, which could endanger their chances of returning to their hole.
The group was even far away from their hole. Noah could rely on Shafu and make it carry everyone if they ended up without energy, but that would leave him alone among the void.
King Elbas had to consider for how long the mission had to continue. After all, the group could always return inside the sky, calculate how far they had traveled through the void, and find a new hole that led into areas that they didn't explore.
The faint hurry that they felt came from a possible punishment from Heaven and Earth, but nothing had arrived in the last years. The rulers didn't seem to care about the destruction that was spreading through their system. They appeared ready to forsake their sources of energy.
Needless to say, Noah didn't like that unclear situation, and many of his companions shared his worries. They couldn't understand why the rulers remained silent even after Caesar confirmed that they would deploy a punishment.
The odd situation made the group wonder about the many possibilities connected to that silence. Those guesses went from Heaven and Earth's lack of energy to a plan that saw the rulers unleashing deadly force on the experts only after they made sure that their punishment would deal with them.
Still, Heaven and Earth had already tried to pull something similar off, and Noah's group had defeated them. Also, the fear of the punishments didn't make the experts forget the reason behind their mission.
The experts had to accumulate energy to rebuild the world and prevent the slow death caused by the lack of nutrients in the lands under the sky. They had yet to gather a decent amount of power, so the journey through the blackness had to continue.
Noah kept his ideas for himself during that conversation. He wanted Heaven and Earth to deploy a punishment to make them waste even more energy, but some of his new companions wouldn't agree with his mindset. Keeping them in the dark was the best option since internal fights could endanger the mission.
The group resumed their travel through the blackness after deciding to keep going for a few more decades. Their approach didn't change after the battle with the jellyfish. They entered every separate space hidden behind white layers with power that approached the ninth rank or crossed it and ignored everything else.
The journey managed to surprise the group from time to time. Heaven and Earth had gathered sources of energy from worlds outside of their system, so the experts found things that they didn't know how to describe from time to time.
Broken worlds devoid of wills still filled most of the separate spaces, but the group also met strange materials, creatures, or structures capable of radiating energy they couldn't classify.
The group met a large cloud made of yellow gas that barely felt alive. The complete lack of cores in its insides made it hard to evaluate its actual nature. The attempts to steal its energy generated arrays of yellowish beams that filled the entirety of the separate dimension.
The cloud was clearly dangerous and alive, but King Elbas eventually came up with an item that could slowly absorb currents of the yellow gas without alerting that strange existence.
Stealing power became far easier at that point, and the cloud didn't notice that it was losing energy until its size shrunk by a lot. Angry attacks came out from the cloud at that point, but the strange creature had weakened during the silent drain, so the group could deal with it easily.
Noah and the others found a massive lizard once. The creature was a rank 9 existence, but it was unclear whether they could label it as a magical beast since it had a fake dantian in its belly.
The sight of a fully-fledged rank 9 magical beast would normally force the team to consider their options, but the first envoy into that area found out that the creature had many chains around its neck, limbs, and tail.
The chains seemed to belong to a different world. They didn't come from Heaven and Earth, and their vibe was too different for them to come from the same place.
The chained beast couldn't do much with the chains tying it up, so the group didn't hesitate to deploy special items that could weaken the lizard's scaled body. The experts could take care of the creature at that point. The lizard died quickly due to a relentless assault, and only a withered chained corpse remained in the separate dimension once the process was over.
Noah and the others seized the chains to study them. The experts even noticed that the four cultivators from the human organizations couldn't wait to get their hands on the energy taken in the mission.
Other peculiar events followed from time to time, but the group always managed to deal with them. The platoon made of cultivators, hybrids, and magical beasts was simply too powerful and prepared to let a few imprisoned creatures in the ninth rank scare them.
Shafu developed a large belly after filling its separate dimension with worlds and raw energy. It seemed that its size depended on how heavy its insides could be, and even Noah didn't expect that reaction. However, that was a good sign since it proved how much fuel the group had gathered.
Noah and King Elbas soon ended up at the center of the rumors spread throughout the group. Their performance was incredible after the breakthrough, and they often took care of issues single-handedly.
Their power had skyrocketed after the breakthrough. Both of them were still trying to understand their new strength, and the many issues on their path helped in the process.
Then, after seizing part of a massive mountain that spoke in a language that no one could understand, the group turned and began to fly in the direction of their hole. The mission was over.
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Author's thoughts: I'm late again. My eyes don't like the screen today. The third chapter will arrive soon.