Chapter 23: Rank Breakthrough (Part Two)

This Giant Fang's lunge came up empty; it let out a roar, gave a violent twist—and violent pain stabbed through its belly. It looked down to find its underbelly slit open in a gash, fragments of its innards spilling out.

Fighting bloodborn beasts every single day had remade Nathan—he was a far cry now from the green kid of that first battle with the Red Howl, the rawness completely replaced by a veteran's steady calm. His gamble of a strike had landed, and before he could even feel glad about it came the whistle of wind overhead. He snapped his whole body into a tight ball, killed his forward charge dead, and rolled sideways out of the way.

Dust exploded skyward as another Giant Fang crashed into the ground where he'd been, jolting the dirt up everywhere; even the ground under Nathan's feet shuddered, nearly costing him his footing.

By then two more Giant Fangs were already charging in. Not daring to linger, Nathan flipped up off the ground and shot backward at speed.

His reactions were quick enough to slip one Giant Fang's lunge, but another swatted his shoulder and back. He rode the blow straight into the beast's embrace, and one Iron Spear Thrust punched clean through its belly—but he came out of it wretched, half his body drenched in blood, badly hurt.

Quick as a striking hawk—in just a few short seconds, Nathan had made two round trips between life and death.

Giant Fangs are bloodthirsty to the extreme. With Nathan badly wounded and the taste of his blood thick in the air, the five remaining beasts went berserk on the spot, their attack power jumping a full class in nothing flat.

Badly hurt, Nathan was stretched thin on every side, no strength left to counter, sunk into a brutally bad position—one wrong moment from being torn into pieces by the five Giant Fangs. If the Comet-Gem Mantis's life-protection system hadn't seized control of his body to force the bleeding to stop, things could have gotten far worse.

Sebastian watched the battle in the ring as if idly, fingers tapping the windowsill lightly in time with the music off the B&O Bluetooth speaker, a faint smile showing. He wasn't worried about whether Nathan lived or died. Suddenly his tapping fingers paused, and he murmured to himself: "This little guy has even more potential than I imagined. By my projections, he should have needed half a year to get fully fluent with the Comet-Gem Mantis—and in barely a month-plus he's come this far. That's a big, big pleasant surprise."

Sebastian propped his chin on his elbow and said, softly and abruptly: "the Comet-Gem Mantis! Unseal the host's source vitae!"

Nathan had held on bitterly for ten-odd minutes and was dead spent. Sebastian's unsealing order came at exactly the right moment—without a second's hesitation he sealed the Comet-Gem Mantis, and black-light vitae instantly shrouded his whole body.

One Giant Fang's huge claw came slamming down square on his head—and slid straight through his body, like a claw raking through water, leaving no trace.

One-on-one, or even one-on-two, Nathan could thrash a Giant Fang till it crapped itself. One-on-three he still liked his odds a little. But one-on-seven was flat-out asking the impossible—even trading wounds to kill two of them, the remaining five were still more than enough to tear him apart.

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Knowing the Giant Fangs could do nothing to the black-light vitae guarding his body, Nathan just plain flopped onto the ground and panted loud, ignoring the five beasts' attacks completely. The five Giant Fangs attacked with everything they had—claws slapping, fangs biting, head-butting, body-slamming—and couldn't scratch him. The mass of black light shielding Nathan swayed and scattered and regathered, like a flame in the wind, bending whichever way the wind blew, but never once going out.

Nathan's black-light vitae could pass through any material—and just as easily, any material could pass through it. This shameless trick could be checked by certain special spells and wouldn't fly against a true powerhouse, but against Giant Fangs—pure physical attackers, beasts that relied on claw and fang alone—it was untouchable.

After ten-odd minutes, Sebastian finally burst out laughing and flicked a single black beetle loose.

Nathan was running the Titan Godslayer Canon to heal when a jolt of danger hit him. He saw the black beetle drop down and bore into his black-light vitae, and his soul nearly fled his body. He'd seen this trump card of Sebastian's up close: black beetles were born devourers of spiritual essence—black-light vitae couldn't stop them at all.

Nathan exploded up off the ground. Midair, the vitae over his body switched to emerald; one grinding twist of vitae sharp as sword-blades pureed the black beetle—already pressed against his skin—into a blob of black mush.

Sebastian hollered, laughing: "Break's over! Get up and fight. My special training isn't for slacking."

"Goddammit..."

Nathan swore. He swung both arms, and scythe-like arcs of emerald aether-force smashed hard against the Giant Fang lunging in from behind. His raw strength still fell short of the beast's; the impact sent him flying. But Nathan's fitness had long since grown past anything a human could touch—he righted his balance in midair and flipped into a somersault, dodging another Giant Fang's pursuit.

In no time, Nathan was locked in another desperate struggle...

Nathan panted in great ragged breaths, feeling like he'd fought down to his last scrap of strength and bled out his last drop of blood. Even he had lost track of how long he'd been brawling the five Giant Fangs or how many wounds he'd taken. The battle stretched on, seeming like it would never end.

The huge silhouettes of two Giant Fangs bounding at him filled his eyes. Squeezing out the last trickle of his potential, he raised both arms, just trying to ward off the blow.

He hadn't held out much hope—he was at the end of his rope. But just as his arms went up, a voice suddenly sounded: "Host potential burst detected. Host has grown to meet the Tier-Two deployment standard. Second level of the Comet-Gem Mantis Style—Comet Weave—unlocked!"

At the same moment, he felt the heart-seed in his lower belly abruptly swell, and the vitae it sprayed began to tremble.

The oscillation in that vitae was uncanny. His arms barely brushed the two Giant Fangs—and the two beasts were blasted away. They hit the ground with scarlet bloodborn blood gushing from ears and nostrils, clearly badly mangled by that last contact.

Nathan's combat reactions were near-instinct now. He swept with the momentum—one Twin Sealed Mountains! Two streaks of emerald blade-light split left and right and chopped into the two Giant Fangs.

The vacuum blade-waves his Comet-Gem Mantis Style threw out had always carried limited power—unless one caught a vital spot, they could barely dent a thick-hided, tough-muscled beast like this, and even a hit to the softer belly would only open a gash. This time was nothing like that. He could feel the vitae inside him oscillating without stop, and the vacuum blade-wave he launched trembled countless times in a single instant, its edge a full ten times keener than before. One stroke hacked the two Giant Fangs clean in half—and one of the blade-waves, still undiminished, carried on and split the last Giant Fang, lingering off at a distance, from head to tail.

One strike, and every last beast was dealt with. Even Nathan himself stood stunned.