Chapter 1999 - 1999. Barrier
Noah had never seen similar creatures. Those magical beasts clearly resembled dragons. They had a pair of wings, long scaled bodies, and four legs, but they appeared too skinny for their own good. The experts struggled to understand whether they had muscles at all.
Moreover, their heads and necks were odd. Their upper part was normal, with scales and two pairs of curved horns, but their lower side basically didn't exist. Long spikes grew to create a long and strange mouth that didn't seem able to remain closed.
Noah, King Elbas, and Sepunia couldn't help but focus on the long tongues coming out of those hideous mouths. They resembled thick whips ready to crack in the air, but whether they used them as weapons was unclear. They didn't have a single element either. Identical specimens could feature completely different types of "Breath".
The strange shape and the surprising detail about their "Breath" made Noah unable to connect that species to the creatures in his knowledge.. His instincts told him that those magical beasts weren't natural beings, and he couldn't help but agree with them.
Noah could justify the matter about the element. The Immortal Lands were so vast that such peculiar beings could potentially be born every once in a while. However, their environment hinted at something far different. The island was in the middle of the void, so someone had to refill its energy manually.
The dragons didn't notice the three experts hovering right outside the island's edges. There seemed to be a barrier that divided those lands from the void, and even the rank 9 magical beasts inside them couldn't pierce it with their senses.
Noah's knowledge about space told him how the island didn't exactly float in the void. The barrier stretched under its base and allowed it to lay on its invisible fabric. Someone had decided to protect and preserve that environment, and he could only think about one possible culprit.
'What are Heaven and Earth doing here?' Noah wondered while flying around the barrier to inspect its fabric and its protected environment from different perspectives.
Everything reeked of Heaven and Earth. The barrier carried their power, but their aura intensified on the actual island. Entering that isolated area wasn't an issue either since Noah could send his mental waves forward freely, but he could sense how that defense tried to trick his thoughts into remaining inside the environment.
'The effects are weaker since I'm only sending mental waves forward,' Noah thought before raising his hand to touch the barrier.
That invisible layer didn't stop Noah, but he pulled his hand back as soon as the tip of his middle finger went on the other side. Pain spread from his hand, but he barely cared about that. His entire attention went on a big specimen that shot toward his position.
Noah didn't move. The dragon that was flying toward him was a mere rank 8 specimen in the upper tier, and its attention wasn't on him. The barrier had managed to cut the tip of his middle finger, and the creature couldn't wait to eat it.
The dragon flew toward the falling fingertip, and Noah descended to inspect it properly. He remained on the other side of the barrier as the creature used its long tongue to seize the body part and stuff it at the bottom of its neck. The beast's actual mouth started on its torso, but it was hard to see with the spikes covering it.
Less than ten meters divided Noah from the dragon, but the latter appeared unable to sense him. The creature didn't even try to move a bit forward. It seemed to know exactly where the barrier began.
King Elbas and Sepunia quickly reached Noah due to his closeness to the dragon. The two experts joined his inspection, and they soon realized that the creature radiated the same odd energy found in the dead zone.
"We found the source!" Sepunia exclaimed, but Noah promptly pulled her arm since she was trying to cross the barrier.
"They aren't the source," Noah explained. "They have only been affected deeply by it. Though I don't understand why Heaven and Earth would leave this environment in the open instead of hiding it."
"It's literally in the void," Sepunia stated while turning to show a blank face to Noah. "How many experts do you think would jump into a crack without hesitation? I wonder how many would even consider looking inside the void."
Noah and King Elbas exchanged a gaze before glancing back at the barrier. Sepunia's words had been on point, and she didn't even need to mention the fact that the higher plane had seen its population shrinking after the apocalypse.
"The barrier is stronger on the other side," King Elbas explained. "It doesn't only hurt what tries to leave it. It even isolates these creatures through something similar to illusions."
"What do you mean?" Noah asked.
"Look at this specimen," King Elbas pointed at the dragon that had eaten Noah's fingertip. "It doesn't even try to fly forward. Something compels it to remain inside the barrier and never attempt to leave. I bet it doesn't even know that an outside world exists."
"Hey, you!" Sepunia suddenly shouted and claimed her companions' attention. "Try to come out of there!"
Noah and King Elbas shook their heads when they saw that Sepunia wanted to call the dragon, but their expression froze when they turned toward the creature. Sepunia had created a copy of what was happening in the outside world next to the magical beast. It could see and hear the three experts through those illusions.
Noah and King Elbas wanted to put an end to Sepunia's actions, but the dragon's behavior changed before they could do anything. The creature voiced a guttural roar before losing its equilibrium and falling toward the ground.
The fall couldn't hurt the dragon, but it didn't stop roaring. It didn't try to shout human words, but Noah could understand it. The cry was a desperate expression of its feelings. It seemed that it had finally recalled the nature of its situation.
The desperate roars attracted the other dragons on the island and made them reach that position. A few rank 9 specimens also appeared to gather around the creature that was trying to express its desperation with its cries.
The roars eventually started to affect the other dragons. Loud and desperate cries filled the area and made the barrier tremble. The three experts could see that the invisible membrane shook due to the deep feelings that those creatures were putting into their voices.
The tremors revealed the existence of the barrier to the dragons, and those creatures immediately focused on it. They didn't hesitate to charge together toward that invisible membrane, but a white light suddenly fell from the crack above them and filled the island in an instant.
The light engulfed the dragons, but the three experts retreated anyway since those creatures had almost reached the barrier. Still, they inspected the island from afar as they waited for that annoying radiance to disperse.
Noah, King Elbas, and Sepunia expected a loud impact to resound in the area, but nothing arrived. The light retreated and revealed that the dragons had returned to their previous behavior. They had completely forgotten about the barrier.
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Author's notes: Someone stole dad's car, so I had to help him with stuff. The memes about Italy are all true lol. Sorry for the late chapter.