Noah climbed the red waterfall next to him and sat on the other side of the black sky once he reached the sea of magma. He wasn't going to miss Skully's battle. She was a rank 6 existence other than his second artificial hybrid!
Skully sat on her throne as she floated directly toward the sea area filled with orange sparks. She didn't seem to care about her safety at all as the barrier around her fell apart, and her bare body dived directly into the Heaven Tribulation.
The sparks crackled with more intensity and released thick lightning bolts that landed directly on the burnt fur. Large wounds appeared on Skully's body, but her face showed only an ecstatic expression.
Skully looked no different than an injured Kesier Ape. Only her skeleton had fused with the creature, so no changes happened on the core body.
She was five meters tall, with long arms and legs. Her mouth was big, and her jaw covered more than half of her face. Her eye sockets were empty, and most of her fur was nothing more than a charred mess. Cuts and injuries filled her body too. Noah's higher energy didn't manage to fix many of them.
Moreover, dark matter leaked out of Skully's skin whenever a lightning bolt hit her. The harmony that the black star had enforced was slowly slipping away as she suffered more damage.
Some of the injuries that the period inside the black star had managed to fix reopened. Blood even started to leak from her eye sockets as the Tribulation raged on her.
Nevertheless, a smile never left Skully's ape face. The sole fact that her skin was able to feel something again made her ecstatic.
Skully had come to accept her poor condition after millennia spent as a skeleton. She had completely given up on herself and had used all her knowledge to gather as many rebels as she could.
It wasn't a case that the rebellion had many experts in its ranks. Human cultivators could only inhabit a few safe areas, but the experts in the heroic ranks could live near the black palace and benefit from her knowledge.
They would then spread such knowledge in other underground structures during the summoning and free as many tribes as possible. That provided a constant stream of experts, even if most of them ended up falling for the God's calling due to the limited area of the safe zone.
Only those who managed to reach the fifth rank and survive the lava lake's environment could completely escape the calling. Anyone weaker than that would have to return to the tribes and train until that level.
However, Noah's arrival had given Skully hope. She had regained a body together with the ability to join her revolt. She just had to overcome the Tribulation now.
Skully continued to smile as the lightning bolts crashed on her, but her aura slowly changed. She had yet to learn how to move her body, but her mind felt freer than ever.
Skully could sense all the matter around her, and she felt sure that she could move it at will. Her thoughts resembled countless tiny hands that spread from her mind and reached everything in her range.
More lightning bolts flew toward her as her aura changed. The Tribulation didn't care that she had finally decided to act and continued its relentless assault.
Yet, the bolts suddenly stopped when they were about to crash on her. They even tried to explode to catch her in their detonation, but an invisible force suppressed their entire form.
The Heaven Tribulation didn't stop, and more lightning bolts flew toward Skully only to remain stuck in place when they were about to hit her. The invisible force blocked all of them and prevented their detonations.
The situation reached the point where the immobilized lightning bolts hid Skully's figure from every angle. It was as if she had created an array of uneven spears to defend herself.
A dangerous feeling surged in the back of Noah's mind at that sight. His instincts told him that something massive was about to arrive, and he didn't hesitate to descend into his hole.
He remained inside the red waterfall though, and his consciousness continued to inspect the powerhouse's battle.
Skully felt the limit of her mind approaching and decided to release the lightning bolts outward, creating a series of explosions that made a mess of the magma controlled by Heaven and Earth's will.
The shockwaves spread through the entire area and created violent currents that made the waterfalls overflow. The pressure was so high that the holes in the sky enlarged as pieces of black metal broke and fell into the lakes below.
The amount of magma pouring into the hidden world was so high that the main lake expanded until it engulfed many smaller ones in its tides. The catastrophe didn't stop there since the waves made of lava submerged even the nearby territories, expanding the lake outside of the safe area.
Noah and the other experts dodged the many black metal pieces falling from the sky as they remained in the air to probe the Tribulation's status. It seemed that Skully's attack had defeated all the sparks, which meant that she had earned her right to live as a hybrid.
One of the biggest waterfalls opened and revealed Skully's injured figure floating on a throne made of lava. Blood flowed everywhere, but a smile never left her face.
Noah noticed that faint trails of black smoke came out of her injuries to patch them. His higher energy focused on the most destabilizing wounds and aimed to enforce some harmony in that body again.
"You have ruined years of work," Noah said before heaving a loud sigh. All the time spent patching the Ape's body up had been wasted by her reckless behavior.
With the Tribulation being weaker than her actual level, Skully could have defeated it as soon as she gained control of her mental faculties. However, she had preferred to bathe in her newfound sensations before facing the challenge seriously.
That decision led her to suffer multiple injuries and reopen old ones. Moreover, the stability of her body had been endangered, which would make her healing process longer.
Noah neared her to inspect her conditions. The magical beasts' innate resilience was already working on fixing her body, but she lacked proper nutrients.
'She must have trained with the Seventh rune for a long time,' Noah thought as he glanced at her empty eye sockets.
Skully didn't show any instinctive behavior, which was rare for hybrids. Her mental sphere was far stronger than her body, which allowed her to remain in control of her faculties.
"I think I'm hungry," Skully said as she expanded her consciousness to look for enemies. The "Breath" released by the Tribulation didn't satisfy her. She needed prey to hunt.
"I'll explain everything on the way," Noah said as he sat on the air behind her back to stare at a white rune on her shoulder. "Be sure to remain still."