Seeing Noan pick up the "Blood Codex" from the stone platform, Barry could not help grumbling in a low voice:
"Whenever they held rituals, the 'Blood Codex' was kept on the altar. Who would have thought he'd just leave it out like this instead of putting it away? He really isn't a qualified leader... If it were me, I'd definitely do a better job than him..."
Noan did not know whether he had heard him. Holding the "Blood Codex," he looked over and swept his gaze across Richard and Barry before speaking coldly, "You two really want the 'Blood Codex,' don't you? Come to think of it, this 'Blood Codex' is no longer all that valuable to me. After all, I've memorized most of the knowledge in it. But even so, I still don't want to give it to you."
As soon as he finished speaking, Noan performed a chest-expanding motion, and his chest suddenly swelled.
With a ripping sound, his shirt tore apart. Noan's chest split open like a monster's mouth, his ribs forming the teeth and his internal organs the walls of its maw.
Then Noan stuffed the Blood Codex, more than twenty centimeters square, into his chest in one motion. His ribs closed, swallowing it into the "mouth."
Richard's brows immediately rose.
Barry, who lacked experience, was thoroughly startled by Noan's bizarre transformation.
Putting an entire book inside one's body was abnormal no matter how one thought about it—the human body was not a storage cabinet.
"What kind of spell is that?" Barry shouted at Noan.
"This? Of course it's a spell I researched and created myself, idiot!" Noan snapped at Barry without the slightest courtesy. "Jeff and Hart both mastered the most powerful Forbidden spells in the 'Blood Codex.' You don't think I'm only on their