Chapter 1406: 1406. Initial success

The new blueprint for the workshop represented a giant octopus that Noah had explicitly created for the trial. Its body didn't exist in the world since he had invented a structure that could restrain the golems.

Noah had learnt from his first attempt in the trial. An army of dragons in the middle tier couldn't stop the golems, and he suspected that adding fake cores to their bodies would only slightly improve their efficiency.

He needed something different for the challenge, something strong enough to face multiple golems at the same time, and that his workshop could create instantly.

Through the Divine Deduction technique, Noah devised a blueprint that could feature multiple fake cores. The octopus contained most of his replicas of Great Builder's oval items, with many of them occupying specific spots in its tentacles.

That made the limbs far sturdier and gave them enough power to restrain the golems. Still, their destruction could cause the loss of the fake cores. The octopus wasn't big enough to cover the entire underground hall either, so it could only protect Noah from the attacks happening around him.

Noah completed his slash and severed the golem's head. Violent dark matter flew out of his blade once it reappeared in the open, and black shards crashed on the puppets that had gathered around him.

The headless golem didn't stop moving, but Night flew inside its other shoulder and severed its arm with a clean attack. Nothing seemed able to block the Pterodactyl now that it had reached the middle tier.

A prideful hiss echoed in the underground hall as Snore raised its massive head to spat a wave of that matter on the golems amassing around the battle. The puppet under the Blood Companion had died after suffering countless injuries, and the Snake wanted to announce its feat to the world.

'I can do this!' Noah shouted in his mind as he continued to fight.

If his math was correct, he had enough energy to clear the entire hall. Adding his dark matter to his martial arts had put more pressure on his body, but it had eased the weight felt by his dantian. Those techniques also required a small amount of darkness anyway, so his improvements made its consumption barely noticeable.

The dark world kept enhancing his abilities and companions as the battle continued. Night and Snore could express far more power in that environment, and the same went for the giant octopus.

Noah exploited every chance that he found to inflict damage. Those golems weren't living beings, and they didn't have any core. The underground hall itself seemed to fuel them and lead them toward him.

They would stop moving once they suffered severe structural damage. The room would spend too much energy to make them function in that condition, so it left them on the ground.

The golems could ignore even his deadliest techniques to launch a reckless assault. They didn't care about their life. They only wanted to defeat their opponent.

The octopus took care of most golems. It restrained their movements and allowed Noah, Snore, and Night to inflict severe injuries. The Pterodactyl and Noah could even resort to more precise attacks that left the golems either maimed or completely armless.

As the battle continued, Noah began to feel some pressure. That trial was far more dangerous than his fight with the Steeled Boar. The golems could gain the upper hand and kill him if he slowed down or committed some mistake.

His centers of power never stopped depleting their energy, and Noah could only keep them in check as he continued to fight. He had to follow a specific pace to make sure that he would last until the end of the battle, which only increased the pressure he felt.

It was only due to his vast battle experience that he managed to remain calm and continue to execute his offensive in the most perfect and neat way. He didn't perform any useless movement or attack. Every time he used his "Breath", the golems lost pieces of their body.

Golems slowly started to die more often as the battle continued. Noah could rarely focus one of them for longer than two attacks, so he had spent most of the initial phases of the fight inflicting injuries to anything that came into his range.

The real killing arrived after every golem in the hall had suffered some damage. Noah would engulf them with another series of attacks and worsen the injuries caused during the first phases of the trial.

His sharpness never stopped rampaging through the battlefield either. All the cracks, severed limbs, and even minor dents were the home to countless cuts that opened and continued to damage the dark-blue metal.

The more the battle went on, the more Noah neared the exhaustion. Still, the pace at which golems died also increased due to the injuries accumulated on their bodies.

Noah fought like a calm madman, and the same went for his companions. Only Snore threw itself toward the golems when it didn't have enough time to prepare its dark beam.

Tentacles broke from time to time, and fake cores ended up crushed by the golems' giant feet after they fell on the ground. The dark world would often fail it seize them in time since it had countless enemies walking freely through its dense dark matter.

Noah stabbed his blade on golem's shoulder, and a wave of violent but dense dark matter shot out of it together with his darkness and sharpness.

Night promptly flew toward the other shoulder and severed the entire limb. That denied the golem's attack and gave Noah time to cause a series of explosions with his dark matter.

Once even the other arm fell, Noah shot toward the puppet's chest and threw a violent kick while Snore and tentacles restrained its legs.

The golem fell backward, and Noah held his blade with two hands before rising it above his head and thrusting it down when the creature touched the ground.

A spiderweb of cracks expanded from the spot where the Demonic Sword had pierced the golem. Flares of dark matter came out of them whenever they failed to dig through the dark-blue metal.

Noah stabbed his blade deeper and released more dark matter whenever that happened. The Demonic Sword eventually reached the ground after it dug through the entire puppet.

Noah climbed through the cracks and prepared his weapon to resume his offensive, but he froze mid-air when he saw nothing more than boulders and debris. Nothing moved in the underground hall. Even his companions remained still in front of that silent victory.

'The others should be harder,' Noah thought as he landed on a boulder and let go of the Demonic Sword.

The blade gave voice to a growl before slipping inside his robe. The Demonic Sword was tired, but it didn't want to rest inside the separate space. It also knew that Noah would cultivate soon, so it found it pointless to return inside the black hole.

The underground hall grew darker after Noah defeated all the golems. "Breath" seeped out of its walls quickly and soon filled the entire area. A path even opened on the opposite side of the entrance. That was the last evidence that Noah needed to be sure of his initial success.