Becoming a Monster

Chapter 681: Chapter 680: What Happens When Heaven Meets Hell?

The energy within the Holy Field suddenly began to move.

Noah watched streams of heavenly energy converge on the Seraphim’s sword, pouring into the weapon from across the field while the Seraphim added more of its own power.

The two accumulated together at a rate that quickly surpassed anything contained within the orbs it had created before, causing the light engulfing the blade to expand until the weapon appeared nearly three times its original length.

Noah couldn’t tell what the Seraphim intended to do with that much concentrated power. What he could judge was the amount of energy being gathered. From that alone he understood that he had to respond in kind.

“Don’t, it’s not your time yet.”

Both Bolas and Kratos had stepped forward to help. The danger they could feel from the gathering energy had apparently been enough to make them question whether Noah could stop the attack on his own.

Noah could understand Kratos wanting to come to his aid. His most loyal soldier probably couldn’t stand watching him face something this powerful alone.

But Bolas?

Seeing even him prepare to intervene made Noah wonder if any of his creatures truly understood how strong he had become. He had never tried to hide his strength from them, and situations like this were exactly why he believed there shouldn’t be secrets between them when it came to something so important.

They needed to know what he was capable of just as much as he needed to understand their limits. Otherwise, what would happen if one of them threw themselves into a dangerous situation because they mistakenly believed Noah needed their help?

Their desire to protect him was something Noah valued, but that didn’t mean he wanted them risking themselves against an opponent he was still capable of handling. If anything, seeing Bolas and Kratos step forward made him realize he hadn’t done enough to show them where his limits actually were.

So this time he would make sure he got the point across.

Another sphere began forming, only this one appeared between the tips of Noah’s horns, where miasmic energy constantly escaped from his body. It started no larger than a fist, compressed until its surface looked completely solid.

If not for the volatile streaks of violet flickering around it like electricity, there would’ve been little indication that the black sphere was made from energy at all.

Noah continued pouring mana into it, yet its size barely changed. Rather than allowing the additional power to make the sphere larger, he compressed everything he added into the same limited space.

The violet sparks surrounding it became increasingly violent as a result, gradually lengthening into wisps that lashed unpredictably through the air around him.

Several of those closest to Noah instinctively backed away. They could understand the danger they felt from the Seraphim’s weapon when heavenly energy was naturally harmful to many of them, but the sphere above Noah gave them an unsettlingly similar instinct to create distance.

Whatever he was preparing had become dangerous enough that even those accustomed to his miasma no longer wanted to stand near it.

And Noah could still take it further.

The corrupted energy filling his field began circulating toward him, feeding into the sphere alongside his own mana. Its size stopped changing entirely at that point, but the energy around it became increasingly violent. Black and violet wisps tore from its surface at random, whipping through the space around Noah before disappearing back into the condensed mass.

One struck the ground, and violet flames raced through the soil from where it landed. Everything within a foot quickly died as the earth turned black, but the flames didn’t disappear with the life they destroyed. Violet streaks remained within the ruined ground.

Another caught the side of a nearby tree. Dark veins traveled through the wood as leaves withered and sections of bark split open, while wisps that touched nothing left miasma hanging in the air long after they disappeared.

The sphere remained almost perfectly still between Noah’s horns through all of it. Despite how little its size had changed, the increasingly violent energy escaping from it made the black mass resemble a small sun throwing off violet flares, with the damage around Noah offering a glimpse of how much power he had compressed inside.

Without the Seraphim showing him how to draw energy from his own field, Noah would’ve needed considerably more effort to generate enough force for what was coming. Now the field itself continuously supplied him, allowing Noah to focus more of his attention on controlling what he had already gathered.

There was still room to improve it. Noah’s connection with mana allowed him to feel where more energy could be compressed into the sphere and how much further he could refine it. That also meant noticing and being able to fix any destabilizing areas on the fly in order to make that possible.

But there was a point where making it stronger would cause more harm than good. The damage already around him from the wisp alone gave him an idea of what continued refinement could eventually do to the forest, and if he pushed it too far, some of those changes might never be reversed.

That wasn’t his only concern. Whatever happened when his attack met the Seraphim’s would create a backlash of its own, and Noah still had his creatures nearby to worry about. Making the sphere as powerful as he possibly could wasn’t worth putting them in even greater danger just to see how far he could take it.

Fortunately, the Seraphim gave him no more time to find out.

It pointed its sword toward Noah, and the enormous blade of light released everything gathered within it. A beam erupted from its tip with enough heavenly energy packed inside that the brilliance swallowed much of the Seraphim from sight.

Noah released his own attack in response.

The black sphere between his horns contracted rapidly as the violet energy raging around it gathered for release. For an instant, nearly all of that light became concentrated into a single point before a black and violet beam burst forward, already more than twice as wide as the sphere it came from.

Neither attack left those watching enough time to follow its path. One moment the Seraphim and Noah stood across from one another, and the next, heavenly light collided with unholy darkness between them.

The result was nothing like the violent explosion many of them expected.

At the point where the two attacks met, the golden-white light began eating into Noah’s miasma, stripping away the corruption wherever the two touched. Yet the black and violet energy wasn’t purified as it should have been. Portions of the heavenly energy vanished with it, swallowed into the miasma before the holy power could finish destroying what it had begun to purify.

For several seconds, neither process seemed capable of reaching an end. More miasma entered the collision and was purified, only for more heavenly energy to disappear into what remained.

The boundary between them became increasingly difficult for even Noah to distinguish as both attacks continued feeding energy into a space where neither could maintain itself for long.

Then Noah felt the mana around him stir.

At first, the change was small enough that he might’ve mistaken it for the field responding to his attack. Mana drifted toward the collision from the area closest to it, only to disappear almost as soon as it reached the distorted space between the two beams.

More mana continued flowing toward the collision, and it wasn’t long before Noah realized the effect had begun reaching farther than the attacks themselves. He could feel mana being drawn from parts of the forest that neither of them had come close to touching.

The effects soon became impossible to miss. The violet flames still burning through the ruined ground near Noah weakened before going out, while the miasma left hanging in the air began flowing toward the collision.

Even the Holy Field wasn’t unaffected. Its light stretched toward the same point as portions of the heavenly energy filling it were gradually pulled away.

Then the creatures and humans began feeling the same pull from within themselves. Mana shifted inside their bodies without being called upon, pressing toward the direction of the two attacks strongly enough that several instinctively tried to hold it back.

It hadn’t started tearing the energy from them yet, but the sensation made it clear that if the pull continued growing stronger, whatever was happening wouldn’t stop with the mana filling the environment.

Noah could see the change more clearly than anyone. Mana was flowing toward the collision from every direction, draining from the forest and peeling away from both fields faster than the affected area could replenish itself.

As the pull grew stronger, the amount being drawn toward them eventually became so great that even those normally incapable of seeing mana could watch it happen.

Faint streams appeared throughout the battlefield, all converging on the same point between Noah and the Seraphim. They became thicker as more mana joined them, until the air was filled with visible currents rushing past everyone on both sides and disappearing into the deadlock.

Watching it happen gave Noah a better understanding of what they had created. The clash was behaving like a vacuum.

The situation changed again when Noah felt his mana begin leaving his body faster than he was supplying it. His beam had given whatever they created a direct path back to him, and judging by the sudden increase of heavenly energy flowing from the Seraphim, the same thing was happening to it.

Noah severed the connection at nearly the same moment the Seraphim did, causing both beams to disappear. And all that was left now was for the vacuum to quickly repair itself.