"What did I tell you before this auction?!" Saul shouted through the inscribed notebook. "That's the Sailbrird family! They control almost all the libraries in the Immortal Lands. Do you know how much wealth they own?!"
"Will you lend me some money or not?" Noah replied, ignoring the shouts coming from his inscribed notebook. "I have enough resources to double this price. Don't make me use them."
Don and Jordan couldn't contain their laughs when they heard the mental interaction between Noah and Saul. The previous scene had already made them lose part of their decorum, but that conversation had brought the situation to another level.
"Dammit! Yes! Have your damned Soul Stones!" Saul quickly gave up and sent some money through the panel in Noah's room. "Don't you dare to go back on our previous agreement. You know that we need the first part of Great Builder's inheritance."
"Thanks!" Noah replied before storing the Soul Stones and the inscribed notebook.
The first part of Great Builder's inheritance explained how to create the fake cores and the workshop's foundation. The Balrow family could invent a suitable replacement for the cores, but it couldn't complete the technique without knowing how it functioned.
Noah had guessed that the first part of the inheritance was slightly more important than the others when they were separate, but he could confirm that only after Saul lent him the Soul Stones. That ensured his upper hand in the transaction and made him sure that he would obtain the cursed sword.
Ethan didn't know how to react to Noah's gesture. He took it as a personal offense, even if Noah only wanted to express his determination to obtain the item.
The expert from the Sailbrird family didn't lie when he said that that money came from his wealth. There was a limit to how much he could spend to purchase a defective upper tier item, and he had already lost enough face after the last interaction.
"I will leave the item to you," Ethan eventually said as he stood up and performed a polite bow toward Noah's room.
His gesture granted him the appreciation of the audience. Ethan had managed to remain calm even after what had happened. Still, Noah had interacted with enough nobles throughout his life to know when someone was hiding hostile intentions.
The auction ended at that point. The case containing the cursed word appeared above Noah's panel, and he stored it before hurrying the hybrids to stand up.
The duo was initially confused about his reaction, but Saul suddenly appeared at the entrance of the room and hurried them to leave. Even he had understood that Ethan wouldn't let the matter go.
"You must leave now," Saul said. "You will only hurt my family if you remain here."
Noah didn't hesitate and grabbed the two hybrids before following Saul through the underground maze. The expert led them back inside the structure of the Balrow family, but he didn't escort them outside.
"I don't have the copies of the other two pieces of the inheritance with me," Saul admitted. "The Balrow family is still studying them."
"We will complete our trade later on," Noah replied. "I have to leave anyway. Something came up, so I will return to the Outer Lands."
"I will contact you once the copies are ready," Saul continued. "We can decide the other details and a secret location for the trade later on. Everything is too messy with the invasion. Even my leaders don't know how much the magical beasts will conquer this time."
Noah limited himself to nod before turning to leave, but Saul cleared his throat to claim his attention again.
"The price of the sword didn't grow anymore," Saul said. "You didn't use the Soul Stones that I gave you."
"I will take them as proof of your good-will," Noah said before turning again and storming out of the structure. The two hybrids smiled at Saul before following him.
The trio ran as fast as they could through the streets of Silkpost city. Anyone in the area could realize that their speed wasn't human, but they didn't do anything to stop them. They only memorized that three hooded experts had left the structure of the Balrow family in a hurry.
"Lead me to the Void Zone," Noah said to Jordan as part of his attention went to the insides of his separate space.
The case suppressed the aura of the cursed sword, but Noah wanted to inspect it anyway. The blade was different from the Demonic Sword. It had a circular guard and a polished handle wrapped in a soft, black fabric.
The sword also had a black sheath that could contain its bloodlust. Noah had obtained the whole set in the auction, and he couldn't wait to test it in a real battle.
'I'm almost broke again,' Noah thought as he reviewed his wealth.
He had used all his money during the auction. Saul had lent him twenty thousand Soul Stones, but they didn't feel enough after witnessing experts purchasing rank 8 items.
Millions of Soul Stones had gone by during the auction. The large organizations could make trades with money that Noah would take millennia to gather.
However, the auction had also revealed to Noah that he could purchase rank 8 items as long as he had enough money. He believed that those resources were unattainable before the event, but the various forces had proven him wrong.
'I guess I still don't have a clear understanding of the human society in the higher plane,' Noah concluded in his mind as a loud sigh escaped his mouth.
Jordan took the lead of the group and set off once they left the borders of Silkpost city. The trio moved toward the Land of the Fallen, where the intense aura radiated by the battles on the border raged more violently.
The group didn't enter the battlefield. They gazed at the multicolored lights filling the sky in the distance before changing direction. Jordan led them around the battlefield and deep into the magical beasts' domain before slowing down.
"Humans sure are petty," Don said once Jordan slowed down.
"They have lived in comfort for so long that they have created different types of struggles for their kind," Jordan replied. "My time with the Legion has made me forget how hard it was to hide among cultivators."
Noah didn't join that conversation. The Immortal Lands tried to keep the three kinds as separate forces, but he didn't care about those differences. Only power mattered in his mind, so he didn't have any bias regarding humans and magical beasts.
"Is it a brother?" The Demonic Sword's youthful voice resounded inside Noah's mind after a while.
The living weapon had begun to fly around the transparent case after it understood that the cursed sword carried traces of a will. The Demonic Sword appeared happy to see that Noah's new companion was a blade instead of a beast.
'We will ask it later on,' Noah replied through his mind. 'We will have a long conversation and understand why it hurts its wielders.'
Noah gazed at the sky in the distance after that reply. It was impossible to miss the battlefield between the two domains. Multicolored lights had given the white radiance an everchanging color, and the very space of the higher plane seemed to twist due to the energy released in that area.
Noah watched those lights and let his mind go wild. Resources and traces of rank 8 beings were becoming a common sight in his life. That was the proof that his cultivation level was slowly nearing that league.
