It was common for such a powerful sect to have more than one rank 5 cultivator, but Noah didn't sense the second presence until the attack reached his back.
Noah turned to stare at the woman that had appeared on the ground. She was tall and had long blonde hair falling behind her back. There was a thin layer of ice covering her exposed skin and robe. It seemed that she had already activated a defensive spell.
A perfectly square opening in the ground behind her radiated a faint blue light that Noah connected to inscriptions. He could guess why he didn't sense her presence before. The opening probably led to a training area that had many protections.
"Are you regretting this already?" Elder Marco said as he flew toward the other Elder. He placed himself between her and Noah with the intent of stopping the invader from focusing her first.
"Carmen," Elder Marco continued as he tilted his head to look at the Elder under him, "Seize any opening. I'm more than enough for him, but I don't believe that the Hive will send him alone in a mission without protections."
Elder Marco didn't transmit that conversation through his consciousness. He used his voice and made sure that Noah heard it.
Elder Carmen nodded at his words and prepared a series of icy-spears that floated behind her back as she waited for the battle to start. Her eyes remained fixed on Noah, who had turned into a fiending creature wearing a scaled armor by then.
Snore's body had solidified too. The enormous snake protectively coiled around Noah and unfolded its feathered wings before hissing menacingly. He was ready to fight.
Elder Marco felt completely confident since he knew that Noah was weaker than him by a full stage. Yet, his opponent didn't try to escape even when Elder Carmen appeared.
Also, the fact that Noah had come alone gave him a bad feeling. He couldn't believe that the Hive had accepted to send its Demon Prince without informing him that a solid stage cultivator ruled the sect.
Of course, Elder Marco couldn't imagine that Noah had chosen him as a target to test his strength. There had never been a cultivator on a lower stage treating a more potent existence as a training dummy.
He guessed that the Hive had messed up when it planned its attacks and had sent Noah into a location far more dangerous than expected.
Noah's aura didn't reveal anything. There wasn't his usual violence, nor the coldness that preceded his battles. Elder Marco expected to see at least a faint trace of fear, but it seemed that Noah's mind had become blank.
Elder Marco gave up on making that battle more satisfying at that point. His Patriarch's target was right in front of him. There was no reason to delay his capture further.
The air above him condensed and took the form of countless needles. A barrage of sharp spikes filled the sky and tilted toward the massive figure of the snake.
A sudden dangerous sensation surged in Elder Marco's mind right after he deployed his spell. Noah's figure became blurry and black cracks appeared in the sky between him and Elder Carmen.
A faint dark shape preceded the cracks. It was as if something was moving so fast that it destroyed that part of the sky with its passage.
Elder Marco was a solid stage cultivator that had trained for a long time. He recognized a movement ability when he saw one. Yet, he didn't have time to warn Elder Carmen since his consciousness had perceived the attack too late.
His mind wasn't at fault. He would have sensed that attack an instant before if Noah targeted him. However, the black shape went after Elder Carmen, meaning that his mind didn't register it until it perceived energy release.
The black shape was too fast for him to do anything about it. Elder Marco could only see the cracks in the sky spreading until they reached Elder Carmen, where they suddenly stopped.
The black blur stopped moving after it crossed Carmen and took the shape of a fiendish form donning a scaled armor. Noah had reappeared wielding the Demonic Sword with one hand and while releasing dark matter.
Elder Carmen had remained stunned for the whole duration of the event. The intensity of the danger in her mind was so great that her consciousness had frozen out in fear. Only her right hand moved, and she used it to point toward Noah's previous position.
Noah and Snore's previous figures vanished into a cloud of black smoke. The speed that he had reached was so high that he had left after-images in the sky!
The cracks in the air soon closed, until all the sky returned to its original state. The only difference was that Noah now stood motionless behind Elder Carmen.
Elder Marco saw the scene unfolding in slow motion. It was a red line at first. A long but superficial wound appeared on Elder Carmen's body and traced a diagonal cut across her torso and waist.
Then, blood started to come out of her wound, but its quantity was too high for the kind of injury that she appeared to have received. In the end, the entirety of her upper body exploded into a rain of blood and internal organs, leaving only Elder Carmen's waist and legs behind.
Elder Marco felt amazed. He had never seen a battle between existences at the same level being so one-sided. Elder Carmen couldn't even react in time, and her protective layer of ice crumbled completely at Noah's passage.
As for Noah, his hand quickly shot toward the insides of her low-waist to seize her dantian. He ate it in one bite, but he didn't remain immersed in the sensations that it caused. There was Elder Marco still in front of him. That wasn't the time to evaluate how much he had improved.
Noah had always known that creating an individual school would make his prowess reach unseen levels, but he had been surprised too. Elder Carmen couldn't even react when it happened.
"You think you can come into my home and destroy anything that you like?!" Elder Marco shouted at that point. Refilling the assets in the fourth rank was already a troublesome matter, but Noah had killed the only other rank 5 expert of the sect.
The True Mountain sect was no more, destroyed in a few exchanges against the Demon Prince of the Hive. That realization made him snap. It was as if he had wasted the last five hundred years of work.
The spikes in the sky began to fall. They pierced the air, creating large areas where the world's fabric broke and connected it with the void.
Nevertheless, Noah stared at the incoming needles without any fear. He knew exactly how to block that attack.
Snore raised its reptilian head and spread its maws to release a series of black flames. When they reached the spikes, a sea of fire appeared in its place, destroying many of them.