"Accept it," Noah said in a beast voice as he placed his hand over the lowered head of the snake. The black smoke that made his scaled armor dispersed as he poured his darkness inside the body of the hybrid.
His darkness took the form of a series of small swords that fused with specific vital parts of the snake. They reached its heart, its lungs, its spine, and even its dantian before merging with those organs.
That was the Shadow Chain spell that Noah had obtained from the Shandal Empire as a payment for his insights into the hybrid's topic. Still, that spell had undergone so many modifications that it barely resembled the original.
Generally speaking, Noah's individuality wasn't meant to suppress his enemies. He was pure destruction when it came to battles, and the original diagram of the Shadow Chain spell wouldn't even work when his darkness fueled it.
Yet, Noah didn't want to give up on the possibility to capture strong existences alive.
It wasn't just a matter of preserving the state of the magical beasts. Noah intended to use it to capture powerful cultivators that he would use to improve the level of his mental sphere. After all, his status as a hybrid in the upper tier was enough to suppress most creatures. Still, cultivators would rarely follow someone willingly, especially an enemy that intended to kill them.
Therefore, Noah had applied substantial modification to the diagram of the Shadow Chain spell to force it to work.
His efforts hadn't been in vain, but his new ability saw a couple of restrictions applied to its functioning.
Noah had to personally defeat the existence that he wanted to submit for the spell to work correctly. The centers of power of his targets would naturally oppose the small swords otherwise and prevent them from fusing with their tissues.
The second requirement was that the defeated existences had to accept the intrusion of those foreign forms of energy and let them seal part of their power.
That was the hardest requirement to meet when dealing with cultivators since their strong wills usually didn't allow them to submit too quickly. Yet, Noah could only work with what he had, and he couldn't go against his individuality.
The snake didn't suffer during the procedure, but it felt the swords taking roots in its tissues and radiating violent energy. Also, it could sense the connection that they had with Noah, which made it think of him like a pack leader rather than a jailer.
Noah swept the huge snake with his mental energy when he completed the spell. He wanted to be sure that nothing had gone wrong during the procedure since that was his first time using it on something so strong.
The reason behind his outstanding battle prowess was his body. Since the breakthrough in the upper tier, the power of Noah's martial art had reached another level. It was far above his spells in terms of sheer strength, especially when it came to his second form since it made use of all the centers of power of a hybrid.
However, his spells were still on the level of a rank 5 cultivator in the gaseous stage. His darkness and aptitude made them match experts at the peak of that stage, but they weren't deadly attacks in the eyes of a creature in the upper tier.
Even if Noah had long crossed the halfway mark of the gaseous stage, his spells weren't as effective as he wished against magical beasts on that level.
Nevertheless, the Shadow Chain spell, renamed Shadow Swords spell after the modifications, would still create severe injuries if the snake tried to break it forcefully. After all, the swords had fused with the tissues of vital organs. They could almost kill the creature if they detonated in those spots.
Once he made sure that the spell was working fine, Noah turned to see the battles of his companions.
The two Demons had taken a snake each as their opponents. They were existences far more potent than the other members of their group and could take care of those hybrids that didn't seem able to use spells in their panicked state.
June, Faith, and Daniel instead were facing the last snake with some difficulty. The three of them found it hard to inflict injuries on that powerful creature, but the fact that they outnumbered it and that it didn't use spells made it a viable battle.
The ability to become immaterial of that species was quite threatening for cultivators that didn't have a hybrid body. However, the Demons were on a level where their defensive spells could match the physical strength of their opponents, and the trio could pile their protective methods to obtain similar results.
Noah felt glad when he saw that none of those snakes appeared to have entered the bestial mental state that he had noticed when he fought the Sonic Hawks. Their minds didn't reach any complete awareness and were still struggling to decide if they wanted to be beasts or humans.
That put them in a spot where they could still become useful assets for the Hive, which meant that the group had to do anything in their power to submit them.
Dreaming Demon's battle ended a few minutes after Noah's. It was hard to submit magical beasts without the ability to command them, but her individuality allowed her to interfere with the fabric of the world. Affecting a creature weaker than her barely took any effort.
Dreaming Demon's snake appeared hypnotized after enough of her mental waves had seeped into its body. It even lowered its head to become a mount for the solid stage expert.
Flying Demon was the next to end his battle. His snake had turned into a statue made of ice covered by hundreds of white flowers.
The two Demons thought in the same way as Noah. Those hybrids were more useful alive since the Hive could interact with them through Noah.
It would be a waste to kill them when they could nurture them to become powerful assets that would increase the number of higher-ups of the Hive.
As for the trio's battle, their fight was obviously taking longer than the others.
Faith and Daniel were only cultivators in the gaseous stage and didn't have access to any technique that could make them near the power of a beast in the upper tier. Their attacks could barely leave white marks on the gray scales of their opponent.
However, June's sparks were filling the gaps left in the defensive measures, and her power was quickly nearing the limits of the gaseous stage. It wouldn't take much until she became able to hurt the creature.
Noah's snake though hissed in fear after the battle had continued for half an hour, and Noah turned only to see that his submitted hybrid was trembling as it stared at a specific point in the distance.
Noah focused his eyes and consciousness in that spot, and his survival instinct kicked in when he saw a series of tornados coming in their direction.