Screams resounded non-stop in the underground structure.
Noah experimented almost without break, that was the first time that he was actually testing the limits of his new mental sphere and the results made him incredibly satisfied.
The sea inside his mind seemed endless, he felt as if the only thing that could lower its quantity was the Divine deduction technique.
Yet, even in that case, the mental energy depleted was quickly refilled, his mind simply produced it at an incredible speed.
'This is really on another level, no wonder there is such a difference between the heroic and the human ranks.'
Noah vaguely thought as he used the smoke of his Demonic form spell to clean the experimentation area.
By then, he had attempted to fuse the body of a magical beast with that of a human sixty-four times and he had always failed.
During that period, Noah had rested only once, even the continuous usage of the Elemental forging method couldn't tire that powerful mind too soon.
'I should be the first rank 4 mage in the history of the Elemental forging method, I don't think anyone has survived to this level.'
Noah guessed as he took another slave from the other area.
The Elemental forging method had basically disappeared and Noah had all the records about its past practitioners.
None of them had survived until the fourth rank, all of them had died or were permanently injured due to the backlash that accompanied the inscription method.
Noah was the only exception.
His early advantage had given him a sturdy mind since birth, his mental sphere had only enlarged faster thanks to the Elemental forging method, he had long stopped feeling pain because he stored "Breath" inside his sea of consciousness.
Sixty-four failures, coupled with the constant use of the Divine deduction technique, gave him a lot of insights for what concerned his experiments.
He had tested many approaches, initiating the fusion from different tissues.
He had initiated the fusion on the skin, on the internal organs, on the muscles, and on the bones, he had even varied the order in which the fusion progressed and stopped it mid-way.
The result was that, no matter how hard he tried, starting with the skin and then slowly approaching the interiors was the most stable form of fusion.
Noah had been ultimately forced to slow down the fusion to make the affected tissue stabilize to prevent rejections when he started to fuse the more internal tissues.
That led to an even longer and painful procedure that most slaves weren't able to endure but it also provided better results.
During his last experiments, Noah had been successfully able to fuse skin, muscles, and bones, the only problem remained the internal organs that seemed to always suffer from some sort of rejection.
It was only when the sixty-fourth slave died that Noah understood that he was missing something, the failure in the fusion wasn't his fault anymore at that point.
'The only variable that I didn't calculate is the compatibility on a behavioral level.'
Noah thought as he went back to his area to deduce.
Gender, aptitude, cultivation level, Noah had already made sure that those fields matched when choosing a slave and a magical beast.
Yet, it seemed that the fusion would always encounter some form of rejection when he started to affect the most internal parts of the human body.
That led Noah to think that he had to find a slave and a magical beast that matched on a deeper level, meaning that even their personality had to be similar.
'This is quite troublesome, magical beasts don't really have a personality and I'm working with slaves that had been trained to serve a master, any trace of their real behavior might be already gone forever.'
Another hurdle appeared in front of Noah.
Bt then, he had become used to the procedure, he had just to tune those details to succeed.
'For the magical beasts, I can only use my instinct to classify their behavior in human terms. As for the slaves, I guess I can only ask them.'
Noah sighed when he reached that conclusion, human interactions had never been his strong point after all.
The next day, Noah went into the underground area where the slaves were kept.
The area seemed larger now that only thirty-six slaves remained, Noah carefully examined each one of them before deciding who approach first.
The slaves had gazes devoid of life, the screams of their companions and the cries of the chained beasts didn't affect their mood in the slightest.
Noah couldn't help but curse at that sight: Those slaves seemed to be well-trained but, for what concerned his situation, that quality was actually a disadvantage.
"What can you tell me about yourself?"
"What do you like the most?"
"Describe yourself with a few qualities."
"Do you think of yourself as an aggressive person?"
Noah asked those questions as he interrogated the slaves, he wanted to create a complete profile of their personality before resuming with the experiments.
Luckily for him, the inscribed chains binding the slaves forced them to answer Noah's questions honestly.
Even if their personality had been suppressed or almost broken by their training, Noah was still able to pick up some clues and to create a general profile for each slave, he had just to match each one of them with a corresponding beast now.
Noah knew that each species of magical beasts had a different behavior: Some species were more aggressive, others were more reckless, others were canny, many qualities could distinguish them.
For example, Fire wolves liked to form large groups but they were quite disorganized and reckless in their behavior.
On the contrary, Lightning wolves formed less numerous packs but had better teamwork and could even combine their attacks.
The way Noah saw it, Fire wolves would be a better match for naïve and insecure cultivators while the Lightning ones were more similar to humans with a noble status and good training.
It was considering those small details that Noah decided the next slave and magical beast to fuse and resumed his experiments.