Chapter 468 - 468. Last phase
The magical beasts that he had listed were sent from the Coral archipelago and arrived in Efrana nation through the teleportation matrix inside Noah's mansion.
Meanwhile, Noah had continued testing the limits of the hybrid and of the procedure itself.
There were things that he had to be sure of before entering the last part of his experiments, when he would start fusing beings with a rank 4 body.
First of all, he had to be sure that the hybrid created from a human and a magical beast was the best he could forge, he didn't know if he could add further enhancements to that already amazing being.
Noah tried to fuse the hybrid with another magical beast of the same aptitude, a Fire fox that, in his opinion, matched the new personality of the slave.
The experiment though ended up in the death of the hybrid, Noah wasn't even able to fuse the skins of the two beings before uncontrollable mutations happened inside the slave's body, killing him in a few minutes.
The loss of his first creation didn't demoralize him, he still had his batch of slaves and the newly arrived magical beasts that he had personally selected.
Noah began to create other hybrids that he then tried to fuse with other magical beasts.
There was still a chance that the procedure would fail and Noah needed to remove that chance before approaching the last steps of his experiments.
Also, he wanted to learn how to create the most perfect version of a hybrid before performing the procedure on himself.
Bolts of lightning fell non-stop on the ground above Noah's facility, the other cultivators in his group watched with wary gazes at the shining lights that illuminated the depth of the mystical fog behind Noah's mansion.
The encampment was going well, the cultivators of the Hive were successfully recruiting the members of the nearby tribes and sending them back in the archipelago to increase its manpower, their mission was going smoothly.
It must be said that they were still in on the borders of the Efrana nation, the powerful tribes had yet to notice their doings.
Yet, even if they became aware of the presence of the Hive, they wouldn't care that much.
Efrana nation was already under the influence of two big nations, adding another weak force to it environment won't affect the behavior of the tribes at all.
However, rumors began to spread in the encampment due to Noah's actions.
He was the Demon Prince after all, anything he did would catch the attention of his fellow cultivators.
The rumors concerned the ominous aura that surrounded his underground facility, the cultivators stationed there saw how slaves and magical beasts were sent there but none of them ever came back.
Also, the bolts of lightning that fell from the sky didn't improve the image of that area.
Cultivators weren't stupid, they were aware that some sort of nefarious act was happening inside the structure that they had built but all they could do was watch it from the distance.
Noah's image didn't benefit by those events, the respect that had accompanied his title soon turned into wariness when the rumors reached the archipelago.
Of course, Noah couldn't care less about his public image, his sole and only objective was to become stronger, he wouldn't mind being labeled as a monster if he managed to obtain the power that he desired.
Noah came out of his underground structure almost a month after the teleportation matrix inside his mansion had been set.
The reason why he left it was that all the slaves and the magical beasts inside had died during his experiments.
Noah had never intended to let any of them survive, he needed to gather as much data as he could before moving to the final phase.
The last experiments on the hybrids had given him a lot of insights on the procedure and made him completely used to it.
He had managed to perfect the procedure, Noah was now able to create hybrids with a rank 3 body without any chance of failure.
Also, he was certain that the hybrids kept the capabilities of both humans and magical beasts, their centers of power didn't conflict in any way.
There were some issues with particular beasts and some troublesome body parts like wings and tails.
Noah wanted the hybrid to have a human body without any mutation of the sort, meaning that wings and similar didn't have a place on it.
The issues were solved by simply merging those parts with the skin, muscles, and bones of the human, it was pointless to create something stronger than both humans and magical beast if then it kept some weak spots that hadn't been fused.
As for why he wanted for the hybrids to maintain the shape of a human, it was due to both psychological and physical factors.
The psychology of the hybrid would be heavily affected if its body was to change appearance all of sudden and it would be harder to have human thoughts if it saw itself as a monster.
Also, the body of the hybrid would suffer from some sort of rejection since most of its body would be created by the fusion of a human and a magical beast while its wings, or similar troublesome body parts, would just belong to the magical beasts' world.
Because of that, Noah had deduced that the procedure was only possible if the hybrids maintained a human's shape.
Another discovery was that, no matter how he tried, a hybrid couldn't be fused anymore with other magical beasts, one human and one magical beast seemed the limit that a single body could contain.
Wary gazes fell on Noah as he returned to his mansion to prepare for the next and last phase of the experimentations, the cultivators from the Hive still bowed at his passage but they immediately whispered between themselves after he was gone.
Yet, Noah was a rank 4 mage, he could hear all the voices that filled the encampment.
'I guess I'm no different from the Mad doctor now, it seems that I really can't walk on the orthodox path.'
Noah thought as he ignored the whispers of his fellow cultivators and entered his mansion.
His inscribed notebook appeared in his hands and his consciousness went on the sky where Elder Ian was.
What he needed now were slaves with a rank 4 body and rank 4 magical beasts, those weren't resources that he could ask lightly, he needed to personally contact the Coral archipelago.