Abel"s knife s.h.i.+ned with blinding light and released a piercing blow aimed for Noah"s chest.
"Shadow! Echo!"
Before that attack could hit him, Noah called for his two blood companions.
Two fuming beasts tore Noah"s clothes and stood in the trajectory of the incoming attack.
The knife cut through their bodies almost unhindered, those blood companions came from rank 3 beasts after all, they were not a match for Abel"s attack.
However, the smoke that they released managed to slightly deviate the trajectory of the knife, making it land on Noah"s stomach.
The knife dug in his body, stopping only after it came out of his back.
Noah found himself with a hole at the center of his torso.
However, pain wasn"t enough to stop him.
Even with such a wound, he continued to focus on his opponent.
His sabers were stabbed in Abel"s body, continuously pouring black smoke in his body, yet he was still alive!
He was defenseless though since his weapon was stuck in Noah"s body.
"Give me a bit of that vitality of yours!"
Noah thought and released the grip on his sabers as he activated the Blood drain spell.
His hands morphed into demonic claws from under the fuming armor which he stabbed right into his enemy"s chest.
Warmth invaded his body as Abel"s blood was absorbed by the spell.
Abel"s uncovered flesh began to lose its rosy color as the blood left those tissues.
The spell redirected the blood toward Noah"s injuries, expending it to heal the wounds that he suffered during the battle.
Abel, on the other hand, felt his already faint strength being sucked away.
He tried to take out his knife to get away from that dangerous situation but, as soon as he tried to pull with his arms, his hands detached from his limbs by themselves and vanished in the black cloud.
Not even his body could withstand the joint damage of the Demonic form and the Blood drain, his healing abilities had finally lost to Noah"s spells.
Looking at how his body was slowly being consumed, he understood that his end was near.
"In the end, I failed."
He thought, before raising his head to look at the fiendish figure that had its claws stabbed deep in his chest.
"If I didn"t waste most of my energies to recover from the wound that your leader inflicted on me, I would have won."
He said proudly, using his last energies to mock the young man.
"If you hadn"t been wounded, I would have already run away."
A low and rough voice answered him.
In the end, Noah watched as Abel"s body was completely consumed by the black cloud and his claws could not absorb blood anymore.
Noah stood inside the cloud, panting heavily as his spells dispersed and taking out the knife from his body.
The hole in his stomach was slowly healed by part of the remains of Abel"s blood.
It must be said that his blood had incredible healing proprieties, once it was absorbed by Noah, it filled his body with vitality.
It took only a few minutes for every wound to be completely mended while the remaining absorbed blood acc.u.mulated below the acupoints on his back.
"It"s finally over."
Noah thought.
His body was back in top condition but he didn"t have much mental energy left.
The Demonic form"s main weakness was that its consumption of mental energy was too high, it couldn"t be used for prolonged battles.
That"s why Noah mainly used the partial transformation, it was easier to control and could be sustained for longer times.
However, he had to go all out in that battle, even resorting to the Blood drain spell to increase the constant damage that he could inflict to Abel in order to overcome his regenerative abilities.
In the minutes that he used to heal his body, the black cloud slowly dispersed, showing the area of death under it.
Samuel stared at it with an eager expression which turned in a scared one when he recognized Noah"s figure.
"No! How is that possible!? Why are you alive?"
Noah had the clothes on his chest completely torn, hanging on his body from their connection with the hood on his head.
His pale and toned body was shown to Samuel.
It had a large red stain on his waist created by the blood that came out due to Abel"s last attack, while a faint scar was visible on the center of his torso.
Except for that, there was no apparent injury on him which increased Samuel"s astonishment.
Noah inspected his surroundings to search for some remains of his previous battle.
His sabers and Abel"s knife were on the ground but they were full of cracks, even the inscriptions on them had been broken.
"I need new weapons, these are now useless."
He put the three weapons away and then picked a s.p.a.ce-ring from the ground.
He inspected its interiors just to put it in his clothes when he saw that the scrolls were not there.
Then, he raised his head to look at Samuel at a few meters from him.
With just a thought, two black sabers appeared in his hands.
Those were the weapons that William had given him after his mission with the Ironclad spiders, Noah had kept them because he believed that they could be clues to his ident.i.ty.
Also, their value was low, selling them or keeping them made no difference in his mind.
"No!"
Samuel shouted as soon as Noah took the first step toward him.
"Stay away."
He shouted again.
The one in front of him had defeated the strongest cultivator in his group, he felt nothing but fear looking at Noah"s hooded figure.
"Here, take this! You want the scrolls that I"ve bought, right? I swear, I knew nothing about the Cause, my father forced me to do the purchase. Please, spare me, the Elbas family will understand."
Samuel pleaded, showing a s.p.a.ce-ring to Noah.
Noah arrived in front of him and took out the ring from his hands.
After a quick inspection, he found more than one hundred scrolls and books inside it.
"So many."
He couldn"t help but be surprised, all those items were spells or techniques with the total value of ten million Credits, he couldn"t wait to take a look at them.
"Will you spar-"
Samuel began to speak again but Noah directly severed his head with a casual move of his saber.
The heir of the Muwlos family was dead, the mission had succeeded.