Noah knew his body and its limits. After all, he had created it and kept track of the changes that his many breakthroughs applied.
The resilience of the magical beasts had made his body evolve together with his other centers of power. He had been a simple cultivator with a beast body in the past. Now, he was a harmonious being, with centers of power that featured the perks of both worlds.
His dantian was sturdy and didn't need any external force to advance. His mental energy could devour the wills of his prey and control other magical beasts with its power. His body had the strength of a creature, but it had access to the martial arts of the humans.
That was the reason why he believed that his body would adapt if he added another center of power.
His idea to solve the issues connected with the higher energy was to create an organ capable of storing it. That would allow him to carry it wherever he wanted and refill it even when he was fighting.
His body would then improve that condition in the next breakthrough. It would make the new organ part of Noah's harmony, creating a being capable of wielding three different types of energy.
Elder Austin eventually accepted to help Noah. He didn't have a say in the matter, but he felt that it was in his right to complain before yielding to his demands.
Flames began to flow around the Elder. They took the form of two sharp knives under his control, and Noah could see how the aura that they radiated was different from the past.
There was some violence in the Elder's flames. They radiated a threatening instability that appeared ready to explode.
It seemed that Elder Austin had taken to heart Chasing Demon's pointers and had moved his individuality away from its previous path. His flames now contained the explosiveness of a volcano.
Noah sat on the ground of the separate dimension with the upper part of his body uncovered. His back faced Elder Austin, who neared him while wielding the two flaming knives.
June was still with them, and she kept her attention on her lover even when the Elder started to cut his skin.
Elder Austin's hands were steady as they moved the fiery knives to perform precise cuts on Noah's back. His cutting speed though was low since he was dealing with materials in the upper tier of the fifth rank.
The knives allowed the Elder to pierce Noah's skin, but they struggled to pass through the thick layers of muscles. Still, that was intended since Austin preferred to hold back until he understood how strong Noah's body was.
June saw how her lover's expression didn't change when the Elder started to skin his back. Noah didn't even flicker when his interiors were utterly exposed.
Instead, he had the time to turn to look at the large piece of skin in the Elder's grasp and do some quick math.
Noah already had a blueprint of the new organ in his mind, and he could guess the requirements in terms of materials. The skin of his back was enough for two sessions of forging.
"You can move to the muscles," Noah said after confirming that he didn't need to use the skin on his chest too. "Take a few layers. You don't need to go too deeply."
Elder Austin nodded while wearing an annoyed expression. He didn't like that task, and the fact that his knives would leave patches of charred tissues on Noah's body didn't help his mood.
Yet, Noah didn't complain nor cry in pain, which made the Elder's work far more comfortable to bear since he didn't meet any obstruction.
The gathering of materials took less than an hour, and Noah stored his body parts inside the space-ring before starting to feed on a rank 5 magical beast in the middle tier.
He now had the materials that he needed for the Elemental Forging method. He only needed to heal and to perfect some parts of the procedure in his mind before approaching his creation.
"I will call you again if I need more materials," Noah said when he saw the Elder leaving.
"Surpass me already, so I won't have to do this again," Elder Austin said after a snort before stepping on a teleportation matrix and disappearing from that area of the separate dimension.
June and Noah ended up alone again, but the former was in no mood to flirt, and the latter was injured.
"How long will it take to heal?" June asked as she neared Noah to inspect his open wound.
Blood flowed slowly outside of the large patch of missing skin. Noah's healing abilities had already kicked in and were suppressing that injury.
Still, Noah would need a while to return to his peak. His body was exceptional, but it was in the last tier of the fifth rank. His skin and muscles contained a large amount of energy, which meant that he needed to eat a lot if he wanted to increase his healing speed.
"Two months, maybe three, it depends on how much I work in this period," Noah answered, but his words only irritated June.
However, she quickly suppressed it. They had just fought about that same topic and conclude that they couldn't alter what they were, even if that would lead them to make a reckless decision.
June was a battle maniac, and she would probably decide to face enemies stronger than her for the sake of fighting. In the same way, Noah would do anything for power, even if that meant hurting himself in the process.
"Will you put it in your body?" June asked as she glanced at the small star in the distance.
June knew that Noah had already altered his body and that he had done so with far more invasive procedures. Yet, the energy contained inside the star was immense, and its gravitational pull was even stronger.
That wouldn't normally affect cultivators since they could use their "Breath" to defend against those effects. However, Noah planned to put the star inside his body!
The internal organs of both beasts and humans were usually frail, and even Noah couldn't claim to have the best of them in the hybrid world since there were body-nourishing methods that improved them.
"It is unclear what I will become," Noah explained as he straightened his position and continued to eat to his fullest, "But I would solve most of the issues connected with the higher energy with that."
Another powerful magical beast's corpse appeared in front of him, and Noah continued to eat until his hunger reached average levels of intensity.
The months spent healing gave him the time to focus more on the blueprint of the organ and on where he would put it. The choice eventually happened to be his heart since it was the only organ that had absorbed the qualities of the Yin Body other than the features of a magical beast.