Chapter 2183 - 2183. Anger
Different roars began to resound on the landmass and spread in the sky. The time dragon's whisper had triggered a reaction in its entire pack, and Noah found himself in the middle of that noise.
His mind grew heavy as the sad cries resounded, and even the odd dragon at his side couldn't help but remain affected by the event. They both knew what was happening, but they couldn't do anything about it.
Noah reviewed the time dragon's words multiple times during the flight. He even slowed down his movements to delay the return to the orange city. He didn't want to stop thinking about the matter, and a decision eventually became clear.
"Go ahead," Noah ordered at some point. "The old rulers will show you the path toward the rest of your teammates. I have something to do first."
The odd dragon wasn't in the mood for words, so it simply nodded and continued the flight on its own. Meanwhile, Noah turned toward a familiar dark spot in the distance and didn't hesitate to shoot toward it.
Soon, the spot expanded to turn into the figure of the old landmass. Noah had made sure that the structure fused entirely with his new creation without losing what made it unique. The area had become a core part of the new higher plane, but its population had decreased.
That event was inevitable due to the new environments that the landmass offered. Many packs in Noah's old creation had long since begun to feel cramped in those areas, so they had left as soon as a chance appeared.
Some packs had migrated far away from their initial lair, but they couldn't escape Noah's consciousness and his expertise in following tracks. He quickly found his target, and the latter also stopped when it sensed his descent.
A series of hisses resounded in the area and suppressed the distant cries that had continued to echo from the dragons' lair. Many reptilian heads rose toward the sky to fix their eyes on the small figure descending toward them. Anger built up in the area, but lingering respect retained control over the atmosphere.
"It's been a while," Noah exclaimed.
"What do you want?" The leader of the eternal snakes asked through a low hiss.
"Aren't you tired of roaming into my lands?" Noah mocked. "I'm beginning to think that you like being my pet."
A loud hiss followed by a reckless charge unfolded before those words stopped echoing in the area. Noah found himself with a palm placed on a massive dark-green head. The snake had attacked him, but it couldn't even make him budge.
"You are weak," Noah commented. "Why did you bother reaching the upper tier? Your whole path is a waste of energy."
The snake hissed in anger again, and its underlings began to jump into the sky. However, Noah mocked the creature before the whole pack could converge on him. "Do you need your whole pack just to make me move?"
The snake felt challenged, which led it to hiss another order. Its underlings immediately stopped attacking and returned to the surface. They obeyed their leader faithfully, but their expressions told Noah that they could see the truth behind the situation.
"You can't win with anger alone," Noah declared, but the upper tier snake seemed unable to hear him.
The creature opened its mouth and spat a silver river that quickly turned into ice. The entire region soon froze, and Noah found himself trapped inside that vast structure.
However, roots pierced Noah's skin in multiple spots and destroyed all the ice around him. The parasite even tried to stretch toward the snake, but Noah forced it to focus on the frozen areas.
The vast frozen structure vanished, and the land under it transformed into an empty plain devoid of resources. Noah had destroyed one of the new lairs in a matter of seconds, and he didn't even need to move to accomplish that.
"Can you see it now?" Noah asked. "You used to be strong and fearsome, but you are nothing more than a beast in my eyes now."
The snake's anger didn't diminish at all, but it didn't blind it. The recent events had proven how Noah had reached unmatchable realms, and the creature didn't find any point in attacking him again.
The upper tier snake returned to the surface and heaved a hiss meant to gather its underlings. The pack would migrate somewhere with more resources, and no one would speak about Noah anymore.
"Is this fine with you?" Noah asked before the snakes could go away. "Is that all you want to be? Will you keep crawling like a worm even during the final battle?"
"What do you want?!" The upper tier snake hissed.
"Why are you suppressing my influence?" Noah questioned as his consciousness condensed into the shape of a dark pillar that shone on the upper tier specimen.
The pillar shrunk until it focused on a spot somewhere in the middle of the creature's body. Its dark-green scales then turned transparent and allowed everyone to see its insides.
The focus of the pillar was on a black oval organ surrounded by silver ice. A dark influence seeped out of that structure and spread throughout the snake's insides, but it appeared too weak to cause significant changes.
"Why don't you want to evolve?" Noah asked.
"Mind your own business," The snake scoffed.
"You will never amount to anything like this," Noah continued.
"Shut your mouth!" The snake shouted.
"You'll watch unworthy beings climb to higher heights," Noah added. "That's how the rest of your life will be with that attitude."
"You don't know that!" The snake hissed as its pride spread in the barren area and gave birth to new ice. "You don't know anything about me. You don't know anything about my species. You built a throne to stare at us from above. Tell me, how are you different from Heaven and Earth?"
Anger instinctively flowed inside Noah's aura as he lifted his head to voice a roar. He couldn't accept that comparison, but he understood what was happening. The snake's pride was poisoning its mindset.
"Prove it then!" Noah roared. "Come into the sky with me and prove that you have what it takes to go past the peak!"
"Why would I join you?!" The snake angrily hissed.
"Because you are useless right now!" Noah shouted. "I don't care what method you use, but I won't stay silent when you choose to remain useless. You are more valuable as a source of meat in your current state."
"How dare you?!" The snake voiced another angry remark before leaping toward Noah again. However, he waved a hand and delivered a slap that flung the creature back on the ground.
"This is where you belong," Noah announced. "Your current form is an insult. Do everyone a favor and go back on being a worm."
The upper tier snake hissed and leaped toward Noah, but he flung it back on the ground with another slap. Some of the scales on the creature's head broke, but the ice in the area fixed the injury in an instant.
The snake didn't give up. It shot toward Noah again, but the latter didn't slap it away at that time. He stabbed his fingers into the creature's head and kept it locked into his grasp.
"Come with me into the sky," Noah growled. "Show me that you can be useful."
"Are you threatening me?" The snake hissed.
"You aren't worthy of my threats," Noah revealed a cold smirk.
"You arrogant creature," The snake said in a low voice. "I will make you regret this day. I won't stop until every inch of your existence melts inside my stomach."
"That's more like it," Noah laughed.. He knew that the mission had just gained a new teammate.