Moryvr didn’t pay much attention to the name as Noah called out.

But the moment the presence within the cave began drawing closer, he knew Noah hadn’t been exaggerating when he called the creature the second strongest being here.

The aura alone was enough to make his expression change.

It wasn’t quite at Noah’s level, but it was still far beyond anything Morvyr was expecting.

And that only strengthened the suspicion he had already been reluctant to entertain.

His eyes remained fixed upon the entrance.

He knew about the drake that inhabited this forest. Because this forest was so important, they made sure that they were aware of any potential threat.

Strong enough that weaker inhabitants generally avoided its territory, yet insignificant enough that no one important had ever considered it worth removing or subjugating.

As long as the drake existed, they were certain that the humans couldn’t do anything in the forest under their radar.

Morvyr had never seen any reason to think about it beyond that.

Not until now.

The sound of the creature echoed louder before it finally stepped into view.

Morvyr couldn’t resist himself from staring.

For several seconds, he genuinely struggled to reconcile the being standing before him with everything he knew about the drake that should’ve been here.

Its appearance had changed far too much. Was it even a drake at this point? Or even the same species?

He had never encountered a creature whose aura reeked of so much negative energy, and energy as dark as a demon’s.

There was at least one situation where he encountered a drake that was even remotely similar.

And that was a skeletal drake. One that was imbued and carried a tremendous amount of death energy. But Morvyr was certain that this energy wasn’t like that at all.

However, beyond its appearance, its presence shocked him even more.

The creature carried an amount of mana that would have been absurd for the drake Morvyr remembered hearing about.

Even without deliberately exerting its aura, there was enough intimidating pressure behind its presence that Morvyr instinctively became more alert.

His earlier suspicion had been correct. Yet seeing it with his own eyes somehow made it more difficult to believe.

"That really is..."

Morvyr never finished the thought. Something else had caught his attention.

The connection. It was the same strange bond he had already noticed between Noah and his other creatures.

Morvyr’s expression slowly became more incredulous. Somehow, that bond had affected him more severely than the drake’s strength.

Demons had corrupted countless species over the centuries. Every species from each nation wasn’t off the table. It was, in fact, how demons had sustained their superiority over five nations for so long.

From the five nations’ species to monsters, they have turned many into demonic beings.

But there were still limits.

Some species could not be converted no matter how they tried.

Werewolves were one, and Vampires, their common counterpart, were also another.

And then species of dragons carrying sufficiently concentrated draconic blood were among the most notorious examples.

Even the Demon King could not take one of these creatures and turn it into a demon while preserving everything that made the creature what it was.

Yet somehow, Noah had done something that looked disturbingly close.

Morvyr’s eyes traveled across Bolas again.

No.

Whatever Noah had done was stranger than that.

The drake didn’t have the same feeling as the wolf. In fact, it wasn’t just the wolf; there were others in the group who had that very distinct connection that the drake didn’t have.

He could tell the drake was connected to the devil; however, he could tell that something was uniquely different. Whatever it was, he couldn’t place a finger on it.

Morvyr’s gaze slowly shifted toward Noah.

He found himself genuinely unable to decide which question he wanted answered first.

How had Noah changed it? Was it anything like the methods demons used to convert other beings?

Why was the connection between the drake and Noah noticeably different from the ones he sensed in the others?

And perhaps most importantly...

If Noah could do this to a creature whose potential had already been exhausted, what exactly could he do to something that possessed far greater potential?

Because this wasn’t as simple as it appeared, not even close.

When demons searched for beings to convert, they couldn’t simply choose anyone they wanted.

There were requirements that had to be met, and even then, conversion itself wasn’t something that couldn’t be performed without limits.

Otherwise, there would be no reason for lesser demons to ever perform the process themselves.

The Demon King and his generals would simply handle every worthwhile conversion personally.

After all, the strength of the demon responsible for the transformation directly influenced what the converted being could become.

Someone converted by a general naturally possessed far greater prospects than someone converted by an ordinary demon.

But because every demon was limited in how many beings they could successfully convert, those opportunities had to be reserved for individuals considered worth the investment.

No one would waste one of those limited opportunities on a creature that had already reached the end of its growth.

Yet the devil did everything that his own Demon King wasn’t able to.

—

Morvyr had nothing to say to Bolas, and the same seemed to be true for the drake.

Once Bolas realized that his presence alone had answered what Noah wanted him to show, he huffed through his nose before lowering himself to the ground, leaving half of his body still within the cave.

Bolas may act as a tsundere when he was around Noah, but to others, his pride as a creature with dragon’s blood in his veins was ever prevalent.

Morvyr continued staring at him.

There were too many questions crowding his mind now, and unlike before, he was finding it much harder to choose between them.

Especially when Noah made no attempt to explain anything further.

"How did you make the creature int-into this?"

Morvyr was still staring at Bolas when he asked.

Several seconds passed before he noticed that Noah still hadn’t responded.

His brows slowly furrowed before he finally looked back toward Noah.

The devil was simply standing there, waiting patiently as though he hadn’t heard the question at all.

Morvyr opened his mouth to ask again, but it was only then that Noah spoke.

"If you ask that, you do understand that you aren’t just asking about the creature anymore?"

Moryvr looked somewhat skeptical, not putting two and two together since the question was obviously still about the creature.

"You’re asking how I changed him... that would be your second topic." Noah tilted his head slightly. "Is that what you want?"

Morvyr’s eyes widened by the smallest amount. The meaning clicked almost immediately.

For a brief moment, he actually felt embarrassed. The way Noah handled his wording was irritatingly precise.

More irritatingly, Morvyr had realized that he perhaps had wasted his first question then. How many questions could he ask about the drake that could actually reveal more about the devil?

A faint trace of jealousy even surfaced before he pushed it aside.

Somehow, Noah managed to sound more demonic than any demon he had encountered.

He comforted himself with the fact that the being standing before him was supposedly a devil.

If the old stories were even half as accurate as everything else he had witnessed today, then expecting himself to match Noah in that regard would have been unreasonable.

Now the question became much harder. He desperately wanted to know how Noah had done it, but the second choice now felt considerably more valuable than the first.

So before he moved on to the second topic, he was going to at least explore just how much he could uncover with the drake.

Morvyr proceeded much more carefully from there, voicing every question he could think of while making certain that each remained centered upon the drake.

He asked what Bolas was considered now, whether he could still truly be called a drake or if whatever had happened to him had changed his species entirely.

He questioned the strange mana surrounding him, wanting to know what kind of energy he now possessed when it was clearly different from anything a drake should naturally produce.

From there, his questions only became more thorough.

Had Bolas suffered any drawbacks from the change? Had he lost anything in exchange for what he gained? Was his draconic blood still the same as before? Had his natural abilities changed alongside his body? Could he continue growing stronger, or had he simply been pushed to a new limit?

Morvyr continued until he had exhausted nearly every question he could reasonably connect to Bolas himself, deliberately avoiding anything that might allow Noah to classify the subject as something else.

By the time he finally stopped, Morvyr realized that although he had learned considerably more than he expected, none of his questions had gotten him any closer to what he truly wanted to know.

If anything, they had only made things worse.

Bolas was apparently no longer simply a drake, but something Noah called a Necrotic Drake.

The strange energy within his body was miasmic energy.

His draconic blood hadn’t disappeared during whatever transformation he experienced, nor had the process crippled his future growth. Quite the opposite. Many of the limitations that once prevented Bolas from progressing any further seemed to have disappeared alongside his former body.

Those answers should have satisfied Morvyr.

Instead, nearly every one created another question he wasn’t allowed to ask.

What exactly was miasmic energy?

What made a Necrotic Drake different from an ordinary one?

How had the transformation strengthened his draconic blood instead of being influenced by the new bloodline, like how Moryvr’s own elf bloodline was influenced by his demonic bloodline?

And most importantly, how had Noah accomplished any of it?

Every path eventually led back to the same thing.

Noah.

Morvyr nearly wanted to pull at his own hair. The devil wasn’t even trying to be difficult with him. That somehow made it more frustrating.

Noah answered every question that remained focused upon Bolas with exactly the transparency he promised. Whenever Morvyr strayed too close to something outside that subject, Noah simply looked at him until Morvyr realized it himself.

After the third time, Morvyr stopped needing to be reminded.

Even Bolas seemed to have grown bored with the questioning sometime ago.

The drake rested near the cave entrance with his eyes partially closed, occasionally releasing an irritated breath whenever Morvyr stared at him for too long, as though he expected Bolas to answer instead.

Eventually, Morvyr no longer had any more questions on the topic that he could ask, at least any that would benefit him.

He still wanted to ask whether Noah was truly a devil.

The question had never stopped lingering in the back of his mind.

But after everything he had witnessed, asking it directly almost felt wasteful.

Whether Noah called himself a devil or denied it wouldn’t explain any of this.

Morvyr needed something broader.

Something that would allow him to reach the source of all the questions he hadn’t been able to ask.

His gaze gradually returned to Noah. The glint in his eyes hinted that he was rather proud of his next question. An expression that Noah noticed almost immediately.

"Decided on your second one?"