Deep into Evergreen forest, in an area not cleared by the Shosti family.
Noah was standing in front of the entrance of a small cave.
He found this place after a full day of running into the forest.
He entered the cave and carefully inspected it.
It was large fifty meters squares and was quite dark, and it seemed perfect for his intentions.
Noah unloaded the contents of the space-ring in the deepest place of the cave to create false proofs that this spot was, in fact, the deposit the Gray Shadows used.
Then, he placed the bodies of the band of thieves on the ground with their respective heads near the bodies.
To better create the facade of a battle, he slashed randomly on their corpses until he was satisfied with the scene being displayed.
He was about to nod in satisfaction when a thought crossed his mind that made him reveal a complicated smile.
'To think that it was less than two years ago that I first killed a human while now I'm falsifying a murder scene to steal some items.'
Since the events with Balor, he never hesitated again to kill any of his enemies.
He never overthought it since he had no time to think about it, but now the situation was different.
He was actively covering his tracks to gain benefits from it, but the thing that made him depressed was something else.
'I don't feel anything.'
He kept on looking at the torn corpses but could not find an ounce of disgust or guilt inside him.
'It was my mission to kill them, so I simply did it. Now, I wanted their items without consequences, so I simply raged on their corpses.'
He stared for a few more moments before he found the answer he was looking for.
'Life has no meaning, that of both humans and magical beasts. Yet, in a world where one being can stand at the top of all things, life's meaning might be found in power. If you are an ant, you can be swept away by a dragon that was simply passing by. If you are a dragon, you might be denied a meal by one hand gesture of a cultivator. Power stands above any definition of good and evil. And to obtain power...'
Noah's eyes in this moment of realization became extremely dark and cold.
'I must be willing to create mountains of corpses.'
A light chuckle came out of his mouth.
'I guess I'm a bad man, after all.'
In the end, he smiled, this process of completely accepting himself left his mind clear of doubts, and he felt freer than ever.
'Now, let's inspect the goods.'
Noah neared the pile of stolen items on the ground and started sorting it.
He looked through all the magical beasts' body parts first.
There were tails of thunder wolves, legs and pincers of ironclad spiders and many others of which Noah didn't recognize the species, but they were all separated in a different group away from the pile.
'I can't keep those, even if I hide them in the space-ring their usage is limited since I don't know anything about how to forge a weapon or vendors willing to buy them.'
He was sure of one thing: the less he stole, the fewer were the possibilities of being discovered.
Next, it was the turn of the weapons.
They were in high number and seemed all newly forged, but their quality matched at most the one of his own black sabers.
'Mh, I think I can take some of these, I won't necessarily use them, but they can be traded more easily. They can be my reserve funds, ten-twenty of them should be a fair number.'
Noah took various weapons of different types and put them inside the space-ring and then moved the remaining forty or so in the group with the beasts' body parts.
In the original pile of items, only boxes containing pills or bottles with strange liquids remained.
'Are these drugs? Their effect should be good if they were stored with the other items'
He took some pills in his hands and sniffed them one by one, sometimes he would feel a nauseous smell that almost made him faint, sometimes a faint odor that made the "Breath" in his body restless.
'These things are powerful! I can't take them carelessly, let's put them away for now and focus on those with a description.'
There were only three drugs that had a description attached to them.
The first he picked was a box with dark bottles in it.
'Beast's essence, concentrated blood of magical beasts refined to be used by humans. Smear it on the crucial spots of the body-nourishing technique to increase the ratio of absorption of "Breath". Its effects mimic the innate absorption ability of magical beasts to increase the speed of cultivation of the body. The results will diminish if used too many times.'
There were twelve bottles in the box, yet they instantly disappeared inside the space-ring when Noah finished reading their effects.
He didn't hesitate for even an instant in his decision to steal them.
Then he picked a small box that contained three red pills.
'Inner-fire pill, ingesting it will create a burning sensation that reinforces the sphere in the sea of consciousness. Helps to stabilize the mind in the training for rank 1 mage.'
Noah looked at the three pills for a bit before deciding to put them into the pile of items on the ground.
'My mental energy is already nearing the level of rank 1, and the constant pressure I undergo during the treatment has the same effects. Even if I can have a small increase in mental stability, they are not worth the risk.'
The constant worry in Noah's mind was that if he stole too many items, he could become one of the suspects.
Since these goods have been in the hands of the Gray Shadows for about one year, it was reasonable to think that they have used some of them, yet Noah still wanted to play it safe and not take unnecessary risks.
'Last one.'
He picked a tiny case that looked more refined than the others, and only one big brown pill was inside.
'Earth pill, increases the density of "Breath" in the dantian. It helps in breaking stages inside one rank of the cultivator. It has a 100% success rate of breaking through the liquid-stage and an 80% success rate for the solid-stage. If used on a rank 2 dantian, the success rate diminishes to 60%.'
That was Noah's first time hearing about stages in the ranks of the dantian. Actually, it was the first time he had any information about the cultivation of the dantian at all!