The remaining Sonic Hawk didn't use only its physical strength and its enhanced innate abilities in the last attack. It had used one of the spells in its possession during that charge.
The chains that kept it bound to the ground began to shine as the anger for the death of its brother filled the hybrid's mind. The inscribed item tried to suppress its instincts from taking control of its mental faculties, but the emotions of the Hawk were too intense and kept on fueling its insanity.
Nevertheless, that didn't seem to stop it from using spells.
Noah's eyes sharpened when he saw the cuts on his arms. Generally speaking, a hybrid taken over by its emotions would rely on its beast side to fight. Yet, the Hawk had used even its human side in the previous charge.
'This should be impossible,' Noah thought as he stared at the creature that was turning to face him again. According to his experience, no hybrid could cast spells during those moments of insanity. Their thoughts would regress and appear in the form of pure instincts, which prevented the creation of diagrams inside the mental spheres.
'Is this because of the laws?' He wondered. That scene led him to consider the particular mental state that he had achieved during the transformation as the cause of that phenomenon. Still, the rank 6 ancestor inside the castle at the end of the continent would have obtained similar results if something like that was enough to control the mental instabilities.
'Maybe, it is a matter of variables.' Noah concluded as he saw the Hawk preparing to charge at him again.
The inscribed chains, a mind wandering in the world of the laws, the experience accumulated in those decades, and that last trauma forced the Sonic Hawk's mental sphere to reach a higher state. It still acted and thought as a beast, but its instincts seemed able to understand that its mind had access to more powerful attacks.
It was as if the mind of the Hawk had evolved after its brother's death, and it was aware of the spells stored in its memories. It had turned the knowledge that the hybrid had accumulated as a human into instincts that it could use in battle.
'Complete awareness, but in the form of instincts,' Noah thought before raising his weapon to face his opponent. 'The exact opposite of me.'
Noah knew that he represented only one side of the hybrids. He was a specimen that had chosen the path of the humans, of the individualities.
Instead, the natives of the other Mortal Lands had followed their ancestors' footsteps, becoming hybrid that pursued the path of the magical beasts.
Noah's path made him become an existence outside of Heaven and Earth's system, while the natives were still inside of it, even if as its natural enemy.
There wasn't right or wrong in those paths. Both of them led to power and could reach the divine ranks. However, Noah hadn't considered the possibility that even their minds could evolve in the opposite direction.
Of course, his interest wasn't purely academic. He had sworn to Danielle that he would fix the unavoidable mental instabilities of the hybrids inside the Hive, so he had to expand his knowledge about that topic.
The hybrid had the chains of the Empire binding it though, so Noah couldn't capture it alive to study it thoroughly.
'What a pity,' Noah sighed as he spat a wave of flames to surround his figure.
The feathers on the Sonic Hawk's body rose and became a spiked armor that it tilted in Noah's direction. Their tips cut the air and created large cracks in the sky, and its speed increased too due to the effects of spells that it vaguely remembered.
However, all that expression of power didn't scare Noah.
He couldn't follow the hybrid's movements with his eyes. Still, he could predict where its attacks were going to land due to the cloud of corrosive smoke and the intense flames that surrounded his figure.
As soon as Noah sensed some movements inside his area of destruction, he unleashed the Black Hole spell, his saber-shaped runes, and the remaining Ghostly Sabers in the spot right after that.
An explosion occurred, and Noah fixed his feet on the darkness under them to resist the repulsive force generated by the detonation of his dark sphere. The armor of smoke around him dispersed as the shockwaves reached him, but the layer of flames had already weakened them. His body suffered virtually no damage in that exchange.
When the sky reformed and the situation calmed down, Noah found the Sonic Hawk hovering weakly at some distance from him. Its body was a mess, and it had lost all its feathers during the explosion. Countless cuts filled its skin too, and there was blood coming out of its beak.
The hybrid had almost died in one attack, but it wasn't its fault. Noah had released the spells that had fed on primary energy since the beginning of the battle. The Hawk didn't have any chance against that.
Yet, the fact that it had survived proved how resilient hybrids were compared to humans. After all, Noah's attack was something that only rank 5 cultivators at the peak of the gaseous stage could launch.
Most experts would die if all those spells were to hit them directly at the same time. Their bodies would disintegrate even before the explosion.
The hybrid didn't seem intentioned to give up on its revenge and stared at Noah with a gaze full of hatred. That emotion was something that only Noah could recognize since he was a hybrid himself, and his mind could notice the various features of its expression even if it had the head of a bird.
Nevertheless, it was too weak to do anything other than remaining in the air.
Noah neared it, and his hand shot to close its beak when he saw that the Hawk wanted to use another sound attack. Both his eardrums had popped during that battle, and it would take them a while to heal. He didn't want to worsen the injury now that the fight was over.
A quick slash severed its head from the rest of its body. Without the feathers to defend it, the skin of the Hawk was slightly softer compared to beasts on a similar level.
The inscribed chain fell toward the ground as Noah stored its corpse after taking out its dantian. The body of the other hybrid appeared in his hands too, and he proceeded on taking its dantian away before storing it again.
The Sonic Hawks were too fast for him, and their annoying sound attacks had forced him to store the dantian of the first opponent for when the battle was over. That organ had lost some power inside the space-ring, but it still met the standards of the fifth rank.
Then, Noah threw the two organs in his mouth and gulped as he turned to look at the rest of the battlefield.