Noah had turned himself into a hybrid when he was only a human cultivator. His mind had reached the heroic ranks before the experiments back then, but he didn't have to face all the issues connected with individualities.
According to his own words, it was impossible to find a magical beast that suited the individualities' uniqueness. They didn't exist in nature, so no other creature could imitate them entirely, not even if planned.
However, Skully had lost her dantian long ago, and her personality had fallen apart in those millennia spent trapped under the rule of the Ape God.
Her entire existence had become an empty vessel filled with pieces of information regarding the Kesier species, and she had acquired some of their peculiarities too. She was the only cultivator who could claim to be entirely in tune with those beasts.
Noah would feel like fusing two magical beasts with a similar species due to the absence of individualities and Skully's connection with the Apes. The only issue was with her sea of consciousness.
Unlike his fusion, Noah couldn't use Skully's body as the core item because it was nothing more than bones. He had to use the Ape as the primary material and fuse the powerhouse inside it.
That meant transferring Skully's mental sphere inside the Ape and make her use its brain once she became a hybrid. Noah knew that there might be complications in that aspect of the fusion, but he was ready to prevent them.
The procedure had required him to eliminate Heaven and Earth's will before fusing the dragon's tissues back then. Yet, Skully barely had any "Breath" on her skeleton, and Noah's expertise was on a whole higher league compared to the past.
The innate destruction radiated by his darkness had removed any trace of Heaven and Earth's will from her skeleton during the first forging. What remained to do now was clearing the remaining strands of the Ape's consciousness before starting the fusion.
Noah placed a finger on his forehead, and a ghostly humanoid figure came out of it when he pulled it away. The shape was an almost transparent will that had his facial features.
Skully inspected the scene with her consciousness as she lay on a large metal table next to the Ape's corpse. She could sense the violent energy inside the will, and the intense hunger radiated by its form, but there was something strange too.
The will didn't have "Breath" in its structure, but something far more volatile, and that worked with laws that she didn't understand.
The powerhouse couldn't possibly know that Noah had used primary energy to build that will. As the expression of his destruction, that energy was the perfect tool to eliminate the remains of the Ape's consciousness.
Noah inserted the will in the beast's body. The greed inside enhanced his mental waves' intrinsic properties and devoured any remnant of its consciousness, leaving only the laws that ruled its tissues intact.
Noah left the will inside the corpse for a few hours. Skully's mind would probably take over any remnant trace of the beast's thoughts once fused, but he didn't want to risk it. Moreover, the Ape was a rank 6 creature, which left Noah with no choice but to be thorough with that procedure.
The will came out stronger after coming out of the Ape due to the pieces of consciousness devoured. Noah could use it to improve his mind, but he limited himself to store it for now.
The dark matter came out of his heart and enveloped the large table, isolating both Skully and the Ape. Noah then lifted the skeleton and placed it over the beast as it gave the powerhouse one last inspection.
Skully's existence had harmonized with the black metal in her skeleton by then. Those dark bones were part of her and carried traces of her mind.
There was a limit to how much Noah had managed to polish both bodies. His higher energy had filled most injuries and patched eventual missing tissues, but it couldn't alter rank 6 materials too much.
Everything else would be up to Skully once she became a hybrid. It would be up to her and her evolution as a new existence to determine what she could fix and change.
"I'm going to start," Noah said as he placed his hands on the membrane made of higher energy. He was about to begin the procedure, but Skully wanted to say a few things first.
"Noah," Skully said in her ancient voice, "Don't forget about us if I die."
Noah opened his mouth to speak but eventually decided otherwise.
It wasn't the best choice to give his cold answers to someone about to experience the fusion. He had already decided that he would rely on the Hive if he didn't manage to handle the situation by himself.
Noah's darkness activated the higher energy, which forced Skully's body to liquefy and fuse with the corpse under it. He wasn't in a hurry at that time, so he could proceed slowly and double-check his every move.
There wasn't enough of Skully to fill the Ape, so he had to distribute her parts across the beast's core spots. Only her skull fused entirely with the creature's brain to ensure the powerhouse control over the body.
That wasn't a perfect fusion by far. Skully would have to slowly expand her control over her new body by using those core spots. When considering that she didn't have a body for millennia, hers was a rehabilitation.
The black skeleton eventually disappeared, and only the Ape remained. Noah fused even the internal tissues and adjusted their harmony before stepping back toward the area's exit.
He had fused everything. Skully and the Ape's tissues had become one. However, the only way to know if the procedure had succeeded was to wait for the hybrid to wake up.
"Prepare the defenses," Noah said as his back touched the door connected with the rest of the palace. "She should be weaker than our prey."
The sound of steps resounded behind him. Noah had warned the peak rank 5 rebels that the fist awakening after the fusion was usually traumatic. There might be the need to fight until Skully regained control of her mental faculties and kill her if she didn't.
"Noah!" Carl said from the other side of the door. "Black clouds are gathering inside the sea of magma. You were right. A Heaven Tribulation is coming!"
Noah smiled hearing that. He didn't want to fight another rank 6 being that he couldn't eat. The Tribulation could help them exhausting Skully until she regained consciousness.
A thick aura spread from the large table and covered the entirety of the structure. Noah sensed the aggression contained inside those mental waves and exited the room before a deafening cry resounded in the area.
Skully had woken up, but that roar didn't contain anything human!
"She's hungry," Noah said in a cold tone as he pointed at the sky. "Let's drive her upward. Let Heave and Earth handle this one."