He shook his head slightly.
It wasn't disapproval — more the mild, resigned acknowledgment of someone who had observed a pattern enough times to have an opinion about it.
Kael's methods were effective. They were also, by any reasonable measure, brutal in a way that Noah's own approach rarely was.
Not reckless — there was precision in everything the dragon did, and this was no exception — but there was something in Kael's choices that went past efficiency into something that seemed to take a particular satisfaction in the specific manner of ending things.
The rod through the snake from one end to the other was a very good example of that.
The snake was advanced grade. Had been, more accurately — a genuine advanced grade mana beast with the horn and the mana signature and the territorial presence to match that classification.
Not something to be casually dismissed, not the kind of encounter that most practitioners at the middle ranks would have walked away from cleanly.
