The battle over the region divided by white rivers came to an end a few minutes after Noah and King Elbas killed Blanche. The other two solid stage cultivators had faced Ian and Jordan, but their situation had quickly turned become quite poor.
Boss April and her companion were strong, but Ian and Jordan surpassed them both in battle experience and sheer power. They were hybrids who had fought for their entire lives. The two experts from the guild struggled to fend off their offensive since the beginning of the fight.
Jordan had quickly transformed into a dragon. Instead, Ian had begun to accumulate his howls as soon as the two experts had left the underground structure.
Even the hybrids had stopped playing around and testing their opponents. The battle against Boss Edna's guild had already satisfied their desire for a good fight. They only wanted to finish their mission now.
Boss April had a tricky law. Her power allowed her to interact with space. She could teleport boulders that exploded whenever they touched a foreign aura, and her defensive abilities also relied on her true meaning.
However, her incredible ability had to have some drawbacks. One of them was its cost in terms of "Breath", and the other was the amount of energy that she could teleport.
The explosions released by her boulders could be deadly for humans, but hybrids at her level could endure even her strongest attacks. Boss April could injure both Ian and Jordan, but she couldn't inflict severe wounds.
That weakness was even more noticeable against Jordan in her dragon form. She was too big, and her amber scales could disperse most of the energy released in the explosions.
Ian was a bit worse off, but he could redirect his soundwaves to deny the explosions. Boss April had to take a supportive role in the battle after realizing that her ability couldn't lead to victory. She had to rely on her companion to win.
Her companion's name was Alan. His law allowed him to create snake-shaped lightning bolts to ride to obtain massive bursts of acceleration. He could also launch those creatures toward his opponents to create piercing attacks.
The core of his law was acceleration. All his lightning bolts could perform sprints able to take any opponent by surprise. Their power also depended on how fast they went, so Alan could potentially injure the two hybrids.
With Boss April's support, many of Alan's attacks managed to hit the hybrids. She would teleport when their power was still low and let them accelerate once they arrived in a spot that could take her opponents by surprise.
Yet, Jordan and Ian didn't stay still during the fight. They quickly understood that Boss April wouldn't be a problem as long as they defeated Alan. They soon began to focus on the expert and render that tactic impossible to deploy.
Boss April did her best to support her companion, but the hybrids ignored her attacks during her reckless assault toward the lightning cultivator. Alan eventually realized that the battle could only end with his death, so he attempted to leave the battlefield and escape without minding his guild.
Still, Jordan's influence had already spread through a large area of the sky at that point. Alan had been too slow in deciding to escape. The hybrid could use her winds to stop his acceleration and deliver a deadly blow with her claws.
Once Alan died, Boss April lost her will to fight. Her guild had crumbled, and her companion had tried to leave her behind. She couldn't even try to defeat her opponents. She would rather let them end the battle quickly than continue in a pointless struggle.
Her behavior made Ian and Jordan decide to take her as a prisoner. The team already had Adele, but it couldn't hurt to have more informants in their ranks, especially when it came to guilds.
The outcome of the second battle turned out to be far better than the first. Noah's team managed to win without suffering any serious injury. They could set off in less than two months and move toward their next target as soon as they finished pillaging every resource hidden in the underground structure.
Noah's group continued their mission, hunting every guild hired by the organizations involved in the invasion of the Outer Lands. Most of those forces were nothing more than small armies featuring only one solid stage cultivator. The last battles ended up being nothing more than a one-sided slaughter.
The other guilds involved with the invasion soon understood what was happening. They couldn't confirm that the Legion was behind the attacks, but they guessed that some large force didn't want them to join that mission.
Those forces began to sever their ties with the large organizations that had hired them. They left their homes and settlements to hide from the fearful group of experts hunting them.
The news even reached the other guilds. The large organizations soon found no one willing to accept their offers, no matter how generous they were.
Everything unfolded as Noah had predicted. The loss of manpower would force the large organizations to deploy their own forces in the invasion. Yet, the first phases of every war would always lead to slaughters, and they weren't willing to invest their troops in those projects.
Once the sacrificial pawns disappeared, the invasion came to a stop. The pagoda in the Outer Land still had a few troops in its defense, but nothing changed even after years passed.
It was as if the large forces had put their plan to a stop. The lack of expendable cultivators made them rethink their approach to the mission. They couldn't directly attack anymore. They had to create a proper plan that could lead to fewer losses.
Noah ignored the political repercussions of his actions. He didn't need to ask about them to know how everything would unfold. The final decision was up to the organizations anyway. They had to choose whether they were willing to sacrifice their troops to invade the lands of the strongest warriors on the higher plane.
His focus remained on his improvements. The mission had given Noah the chance to fight many solid stage cultivators. His battle experience increased again in that period, and he even managed to perfect his new techniques.
Noah also created new abilities that could improve his battle prowess. Once he had confirmed that spells could work together with the workshop, Noah went through a long testing phase that aimed to bring his power to a new level.
After all the battles were over, Noah and the others flew back to the Outer Lands, carrying their prisoners with them. Adele and Boss April had ended up being only the firsts of a long trail of cultivators trapped during their battles.
When they returned to Yellnbel, the group noticed that the rank 8 auras high in the sky had disappeared. It seemed that the experts in the eighth rank had taken a break from their endless battle. The two forces had silently agreed to seal a truce while the situation was so unstable.
Noah's group led the prisoners inside the city, and Theodora didn't hesitate to take the issue into her own hands. Those cultivators could become significant assets for the Legion, so she didn't want to kill them or let them rot in a cell.
Wilfred was with Theodora inside the largest building in the whole city. The hybrid and Noah's group observed how Theodora handled the prisoners and tampered with their memories to protect her underlings' identity.