Chapter 37: The Red-Furred Ape

Two Giant Fangs that lunged in were cut in half at the waist in a single instant. The high-frequency electromagnetic blade-force, momentum undiminished, flew on ten-odd meters and brutally cleaved yet another Giant Fang in two before finally dissipating into the air.

The battling Giant Fangs and the red-furred ape were all stunned by that destructive force, and the fighting stopped. But Nathan wasn't feeling that generous, and griped inwardly: "Oh no, you don't just call a time-out when you feel like it. Since you were so eager to drag me into the fight, let me show you beasts what kind of enemy you should never provoke."

Nathan's hands locked, and two more high-frequency electromagnetic blade-forces flew—in a split second, two more Giant Fangs dropped dead.

This time, the surviving Giant Fangs and the red-furred ape had zero appetite for staying; they scattered and fled every which way.

Nathan ignored the Giant Fangs—he'd killed plenty of that kind of beast, and the thrill was gone. He locked onto the red-furred ape and gave chase.

The red-furred ape's speed might edge out Nathan's by a hair, but with the Comet-Gem Mantis unsealed, Nathan's high-frequency electromagnetic blade-forces could reach dozens of meters out—more than enough to force that speed back down.

Nathan, giving his new power a test drive, secretly rejoiced. Before his vitae resonance, five Giant Fangs had put him through hell; now even ten-plus Giant Fangs would be a pack he could break, and even the red-furred ape—far nastier than a Giant Fang—didn't dare take his edge head-on. It meant his combat power truly wasn't what it used to be.

"Wonder what odds I'd actually have against Sebastian now."

Nathan spun a few idle thoughts in the gaps of combat, but his hands never eased—three high-frequency electromagnetic blade-forces in a row blasted the red-furred ape into rolling all over the ground, no time at all to flee, until he'd chased it down to within ten meters.

In a duel with bloodborn beasts, that range already counted as knives crossed—beast bodies are brutal and their speed startling; that much distance was nothing, a pounce before you could blink.

The red-furred ape couldn't flee—and seemed to have steeled itself for anything. Its arms spread wide, and it flipped over into a sudden lunge, gliding through midair, sweeping ten-odd meters in one pass, and it could actually keep accelerating in the air.

Nathan felt a small jolt of alarm. This beast definitely couldn't fly, yet it actually had the special ability to accelerate midair. If he hadn't been through countless life-and-death training sessions—if he hadn't already learned to stay on constant guard for bloodborn beasts pulling unexpected special abilities mid-fight—he'd absolutely have eaten a big loss right there.

Prepared now, Nathan wasn't so easily ambushed by the beast. One sweep of his hand, and dozens of dark-gold spears materialized all around him—at his sharp shout, every one of them streaked out.

Still in midair, the red-furred ape had ten-odd dark-gold spears punch through its body; the breath of vitae it needed never came, and it plunged from the sky.

As if Nathan was going to extend this beast any "courtesy"!

He pressed down with both hands, and the dark-gold spears that had missed swung around in unison, angling down at the ground to impale it. Nimble as the red-furred ape was, even in critical condition still rolling and struggling, there was no standing up to that many dark-gold spears: in a blink it had seven or eight more shafts in its body, until the beast was bristling like a hedgehog!

The red-furred ape gave a couple of freak screeches and tried to get up.

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Nathan pressed his hand again—another few dozen dark-gold spears flew out.

This time he had leisure to spare, and aimed nearly every spear at the beast's head.

The next instant, the beast's head burst like an overripe melon.

With the red-furred ape dead, Nathan was pretty delighted at his own improvement. He didn't pay the slain beast much mind—lingered briefly, and was just about to leave when the ape's whole body shed a strange radiance; moments later the carcass had vanished without a trace, leaving nothing behind but a scroll.

From Sebastian and Wren, Nathan had learned that this abandoned Between was basically a real-world version of an MMO. He'd opened "treasure chests" and everything, but he'd never quite believed it. The scroll dropping from the dead red-furred ape erased his last shred of doubt—he finally felt that this abandoned Between really did run like an online game.

"Killing bloodborn actually drops loot? Then how come I'm not earning any XP? Maybe the Concord and the ascendant-path orders built this training ground with the feature set incomplete? Or maybe that feature's reserved for the pay-to-win players—fork over the starlings and it unlocks..."

The Shadowless Whip flicked out, snagged the scroll, and delivered it into Nathan's hand.

He popped the scroll open with a casual flick—and, somewhat unexpectedly, it wasn't a skill scroll at all, but a quest scroll.

Chain Quest: Find the Sealing Platforms!

By the clues this chain quest gave, the Between held eighteen Sealing Platforms in all, each sealing away a bloodborn beast of extreme power. Open a Sealing Platform and defeat the beast sealed inside, and you'd win a war-beast—rewards rich in the extreme, and of course the danger just as high.

The quest scroll came with a map attached, charting the entire abandoned Between and covering some of its history.

Nathan read the chain quest carefully, and only then learned the legend: this abandoned Between was said to be a fragment of the Hourbound Grove fallen to earth. The Hourbound Grove was the Citadel Sovereign's own garden—even a mere fragment of one garden was no small thing. After the Concord discovered the place, they studied it for years without gleaning anything of value, and only then opened it up as a residential zone, designed part of it into a training ground, and named it the Hourbound Grove Training Ground.

The abandoned Between's terrain was almost all plains, with only slight hills at the two farthest ends—roughly two to three hundred square kilometers. No lakes or rivers anywhere; in other words, no water source at all. It was an "island" shaped almost exactly like a paramecium.

Besides the uninhabited village Nathan had explored, there were two more ruins. Both looked fairly grand—not ordinary villages, but two ruined palace complexes.

Nathan wasn't much interested in the so-called the Hourbound Grove legend—after all, he'd already seen the Godstone in the Cloudhall, itself legendarily fallen from the Nine-Sphere Citadel to the earthly world. Secrets of that tier were simply not for a newly awakened young bloodborn like him to crack; puzzling over the Hourbound Grove's secrets would be a criminal waste of brain cells. He cared far more about the chain quest's other parts.

A quick search of the map, and Nathan found it: the seventh Sealing Platform happened to seal the Phantomveil Vine.

He clicked his tongue inwardly at the Hourbound Grove Training Ground's generous drop rates. The Phantomveil Vine he'd assumed would be a brutal hunt was practically sitting in his lap, and he thought: "Never thought finding the Phantomveil Vine would be this easy. Could it be that nobody's come here for so long, the system auto-adjusted the drop rates?"