Becoming a Monster

Chapter 680: Chapter 679: Anything You Can Do…

The Seraphim should’ve been something Noah looked at as a threat.

Its strength alone gave him every reason to. Even after absorbing the Potentate’s soul and undergoing another change, the being standing across from him remained close enough to his own strength that fighting it would be nothing like dealing with the warriors that came before it.

Yet the longer Noah stared at the Seraphim, the less he found himself thinking about the fight. His attention kept returning to the soul contained within it and what consuming something that powerful might do to him.

He had encountered a Seraphim once before and failed to claim its soul after its death. At the time, losing it had meant little compared to surviving everything that happened, but Noah was no longer the same person who fought desperately to survive that encounter.

Now that one of God’s lesser warriors had already caused such a drastic change within him, watching another Seraphim return to Heaven without taking its soul wasn’t something he intended to allow.

That thought eventually drew Noah’s attention toward the humans tethered to the other warriors. His gaze moved between them with none of the hostility they might’ve expected from someone they had come here to kill. Their deaths weren’t what Noah wanted right now.

If anything, he wanted them to survive. As long as their lives kept those celestial beings anchored to this world, killing them would only risk taking away Noah’s opportunity to claim the souls he was becoming increasingly interested in consuming.

—

His attention immediately returned to the Seraphim when it finally made its move. Much like the one Noah faced before, there was something domineering about the way it acted. It showed no interest in testing him or wasting time with smaller attacks, instead raising its weapon as seven glowing orbs began forming around its body.

Noah could feel the amount of heavenly energy gathering within each one, and their purpose became obvious before they finished taking shape. If those attacks were allowed to reach his side, many of the creatures outside his main attacking force wouldn’t survive. Even those strong enough to endure them would struggle against the concentrated holy energy.

Merging would’ve been the easiest answer. It hardly mattered which of his stronger creatures Noah chose when any one of them could push his strength beyond the Seraphim’s, but the thought of doing so brought his attention back to the old man who had sacrificed himself to bring this entity here.

Noah had watched him willingly offer his life without the slightest hesitation. He still didn’t understand why these people were so adamant about sacrificing one of their own, but it forced him to consider something he hadn’t accounted for when deciding how much strength to reveal.

“What if they sacrifice everyone there to summon something else?”

Noah couldn’t even begin to imagine what that many lives might allow those people to call into this world. He had already seen what sacrificing two ordinarily worthless humans had accomplished on Earth, and the people gathered here included members of the Church powerful enough to already summon beings from heaven.

Giving the humans a reason to believe their current forces couldn’t accomplish anything at all could push them toward something far more drastic.

That made revealing more of his strength unnecessarily dangerous. Noah still felt in control of the battle, and as long as that remained true, he saw no reason to force the humans into greater desperation just in order to make the fight easier for himself.

There was another reason he was willing to accept the risk. After the changes to his soul, Noah found himself placing even more importance on giving his creatures the chance to evolve.

His creatures weren’t going to discover how much further they could grow if he protected them from every opponent capable of pushing them.

As long as Noah remained confident he could intervene before the cost became too great, he was willing to give them that opportunity.

By then, the seven orbs around the Seraphim had nearly finished gathering their energy. If Noah wanted to intercept every attack before it could reach his creatures, he would’ve normally needed to revert to his slime form. With it, he could create multiple appendages capable of forming their own spheres of mana, giving him enough separate attacks to contend with all seven at once.

The problem was that experience had already shown Noah how vulnerable his slime body was to holy energy. Changing forms might’ve given him what he needed to protect everyone else, but against the Seraphim, it would’ve left Noah himself at a greater disadvantage.

But that was if he was still the old Noah.

Recognition entered Noah’s eyes as he watched the seven sources of heavenly energy hovering around the Seraphim. He had already taken something unique to God’s servants and recreated it through his own power when he manifested his own version of their holy field.

Nothing said he couldn’t take more of their abilities for his own.

Seven masses of black and violet energy began condensing around Noah. Miasma churned through each one as he forced his mana into the same structure he had just witnessed, shaping them rapidly while the Seraphim’s own attack reached completion. It had been given far longer to gather its power, leaving Noah with no expectation of matching the beams directly.

Fortunately, overpowering them wasn’t what he intended to do.

The seven golden orbs erupted almost simultaneously, beams of concentrated heavenly energy tearing across the space between them. Noah released his own a moment later, each black and violet beam meeting one of the Seraphim’s attacks before any could reach the creatures behind him.

Light exploded across the battlefield at every point of impact. The Seraphim’s attacks carried more power, allowing them to tear through Noah’s beams, but the miasma woven throughout his mana ate away at the heavenly energy during the collision. By the time the seven beams broke through, enough of their power had been lost that the field filling the battlefield could begin affecting what remained.

Noah had initially thought of his creation as the complete opposite of the Holy Field, but that description wasn’t entirely accurate. Replicating the ability through his own power changed it into something far more closely tied to his existence, and that connection determined how those within the field benefited.

His tamed creatures, vassals, and Fallen received the greatest enhancements because their souls were directly connected to his own. The field granted them the same enhancements Noah could normally provide individually, only stronger, while also improving the quality of their mana for as long as they remained within its influence.

Those who had ingested Noah’s blood received the next greatest increase. Their connection to him wasn’t as substantial as a direct bond between their souls, but his blood still allowed the field to strengthen them beyond what its energy alone would’ve provided.

Everyone else capable of using negative or demonic energy benefited differently, drawing directly from the enormous amount saturating the field and using it as a reserve to replenish themselves as they saw fit.

Its similarity to the Holy Field became more apparent in how it treated opposing energy. Holy power sought to purify the tainted mana that entered its domain, whereas Noah’s field attempted to corrupt or absorb energy incompatible with his own.

That effect was already spreading through what remained of the Seraphim’s attacks, black and violet seeping into the weakened golden light while the field stripped away the power that resisted being changed.

The beams continued losing their form as they traveled, portions disappearing into the field while the rest became increasingly corrupted by Noah’s energy. They had already lost too much power during the collision to resist the process for long, and the last remnants dissolved before they could reach any of his creatures.

For any normal sentient creature, seeing its attack fail in such an unexpected way might have caused at least a moment of hesitation. The Seraphim showed none. Its gaze immediately settled on Noah, seemingly identifying him as the source of the field’s interference, before seven familiar orbs appeared around its body.

This time, however, they didn’t remain alone.

Another seven formed beyond the first, creating a second ring of heavenly energy around the Seraphim. All fourteen shifted toward Noah at once, making it clear that it had abandoned any interest in attacking the creatures surrounding him. If he was responsible for disrupting its power, then eliminating him was apparently the most direct solution.

Those watching understood that much, yet no one moved to interfere. It wasn’t that they were willing to leave Noah to face the attack alone. They simply had no idea what they could contribute when the exchange had already reached a level where even getting between the two seemed more likely to hinder him than help.

Then fourteen new spheres appeared.

Several heads turned toward Noah in surprise as the corrupted energy surrounding him condensed almost as quickly as the Seraphim had formed its own.

The fourteen orbs surrounding the Seraphim released their beams almost simultaneously. Noah’s own followed a fraction of a second later, sending another fourteen streaks of energy across the space between them.

Every one found its counterpart.

The opposing beams collided at nearly the same distance from both of them, filling the space between Noah and the Seraphim with violent bursts of corrupted and heavenly energy.

That alone left many of those watching unsure of what they had witnessed. Noah had attacked second, yet each of his beams traveled along the exact path necessary to intercept the Seraphim’s attack.

There had been no searching for their trajectories or correcting his aim afterward. From the moment his orbs released their energy, they were already headed toward the points where the Seraphim’s beams would meet them.

Somehow, Noah had known where all fourteen were going.

And it was at this moment that the Seraphim took it personally.