Chapter 39: Battle-Familiar: the Phantomveil Vine (Part Two) the Phantomveil Vine: Blood Lord-tier w

the Phantomveil Vine: Blood Lord-tier war-beast...

At that prompt, the blood in Nathan's whole body boiled; three words just kept echoing in his head: "Blood Lord-tier... Blood Lord-tier... Blood Lord-tier..."

At the same time, Nathan made a new decision: he would absolutely never hand the Phantomveil Vine over to Sebastian.

Nathan thought it through privately: "The Phantomveil Vine is a Blood Lord-tier war-beast. If I knew the way to pull out the Ironweave Grub, I could cure Mom myself—why keep suffering Sebastian's coercion? And I absolutely don't believe Sebastian would spare my mother once he has the Phantomveil Vine! If this vine lands in his hands and he uses it to master the Order of the Deathless's exclusive art, squashing me would be about as hard as squashing an ant—handing it over only makes things worse. But what if Sebastian, willing to burn us both, triggers the Ironweave Grub early?"

While Nathan was sunk in thought, one of the Phantomveil Vine's tendrils curled over and flicked a bottle up into the air.

He'd thrown out all the Drunken Saint's Draught earlier, but this particular bottle must have been extra sturdy, and it had landed somewhere soft—against all odds, it hadn't broken. At the sight of it, the boy's eyes lit up, and a plan took rapid shape at the bottom of his heart.

"The Phantomveil Vine goes limp and drained, bond-power collapsing, when hit with the Drunken Saint's Draught. So what would happen to Sebastian?"

Delighted, Nathan gave a long cry, turned into black light, and flew out of the dry well.

The Phantomveil Vine followed him, drilling up out of the dry well. The bloodborn vine was simply too enormous—it took a full hour to display itself completely before the boy.

The bloodborn vine knotted itself into a giant vine-ball, a good twenty meters across or more.

Every vine bore emerald-green leaves, and on each leaf lurked the faint suggestion of a human face; now and then they'd give off a soft babble—muted and hoarse, with nothing you could call a tone. That was because this Phantomveil Vine had been sealed in the Hourbound Grove Training Ground, with zero contact with humans, so it had never learned human speech. Otherwise, in battle, the Phantomveil Vine could let loose a million million voices—demonic shrieking, giggling, raging—enough to shatter countless people with weaker minds.

The spirit-wave from the quest scroll also transmitted, at the same time, a set of control permissions for the war-beast Phantomveil Vine.

war-beasts were a very peculiar kind of existence—they had no self-awareness, and not because it had been destroyed; they'd simply never had any from the very beginning.

The only difference between a bloodborn creature and a bloodborn is the awakening of spiritual consciousness. A war-beast is an ordinary bloodborn creature with artificial spiritual consciousness implanted—a re-engineered "electronic bloodborn." It has more than a bloodborn creature, thanks to the artificial consciousness, but precisely because that consciousness is artificial, it doesn't possess self-awareness the way a real bloodborn does.

They can support a host and provide all kinds of functions; combat is just one of those functions.

The moment Nathan received the permissions, some unseen force planted artificial spiritual consciousness into the Phantomveil Vine as well.

In nothing flat, the war-beast's and the master's spirit-waves linked up.

Nathan was an old hand at this by now—after all, he already had two war-beasts. He took control of the Phantomveil Vine with ease and opened its control light-screen.

The Phantomveil Vine was a Blood Lord-tier war-beast, a full tier above the Comet-Gem Mantis.

But precisely because the Phantomveil Vine's tier was so high, Nathan's Star-Swallowing Form couldn't assimilate it—he could only exercise simple control.

Without the permissions the Hourbound Grove provided, Nathan could have done some crude puppeting of the Phantomveil Vine, but he'd never have been able to turn this war-beast into a full part of his own fighting strength. Now, of course, it was different: with the control permissions, just a little familiarization let him steer the bloodborn vine however he pleased.

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At Nathan's command, the bloodborn vine's tendrils curled and wrapped him up entirely, and at its core converted into something like a control pod.

The pod had real sci-fi style: a fully transparent spherical screen that not only showed the surroundings but kept displaying all kinds of data. If not for the vines flickering in and out of existence around it, twisting and tangling, it could easily have been mistaken for the cockpit of some battle mech.

And thanks to the Phantomveil Vine's innate gift, the pod itself faded in and out of existence—deeply uncanny stuff.

While tuning the Phantomveil Vine's controls to suit himself better, Nathan didn't forget to check over the war-beast's specs.

When Nathan's eyes landed on a few familiar words on the light-screen, his face changed at once.

The Nine Shadowlashes was one of the Order of the Deathless's mightiest ascendant-path martial arts!

The Phantomveil Vine was a war-beast purpose-built for the Nine Shadowlashes, able to bring a host rapidly up through the first sixteen layers of that ascendant-path art—sparing you all the agonies of training and cutting the time it took.

Its innate Dual-Phase Ghost Circle, once modified, could even simulate the Nine Shadowlashes's highest level—the Dual-Phase Phantom Ward.

Nathan burst out: "The Nine Shadowlashes! Isn't that the skill scroll I got for killing that bloodborn tree?" He thought it over carefully, and a sudden chill crept into his heart.

In that one clash with him, Sebastian hadn't shown any extraordinary power—he'd used a trick and a cheap shot to dump Nathan into the abandoned Between.

The second time they met, Sebastian had stooped to dirty means to coerce him into working, and without realizing it Nathan had developed a touch of contempt for the man—even quietly begun to feel that, with his strength climbing this fast, beating this Order of the Deathless acolyte was a pretty safe bet.

But the connection between the Phantomveil Vine and the Nine Shadowlashes planted real suspicion. Nathan thought darkly: "The Hourbound Grove was jointly developed by the Concord and four ascendant-path orders. Sebastian never said which four, but the Order of the Deathless is definitely one of them. He's this desperate for the Phantomveil Vine—he has to be practicing the Nine Shadowlashes himself and needs the vine to push his attainment. In other words, he's been hiding his strength all along... No wonder he claimed last time that his ascendant-path martial arts ranked above his war-beast raising. He's only ever fought with the black beetles, and I'd been assuming the beetles were his trump card."

Nathan had picked up the Nine Shadowlashes in the Hourbound Grove too, and he'd been treating it as his hole card against Sebastian—thinking of that, he felt cold sweat crawl down his spine.

Nathan released control of the Phantomveil Vine, drifted lightly to the ground, and let the war-beast roam free.

He didn't linger long in the Hourbound Grove, this abandoned Between. He soon made his way to the exit, waited half an hour for Sebastian to open the passage, and shot out the very first second it did.

Seeing Nathan, Sebastian's eyes lit up a touch despite himself, and he asked: "Run into a nasty bloodborn beast? You look pretty roughed-up!"

After all that time at the bottom of the dry well—shattering the Sealing Platform, releasing the Phantomveil Vine—Nathan was naturally caked in dirt, looking exactly like a boy who'd been through a grinding battle.

He offered no explanation, just a cold snort, saying flatly: "Not dead yet!"

Sebastian laughed it off and didn't press him, leaving only one parting instruction: "You'd better speed it up. The Ironweave Grub devours its host's essence and blood, and your mother's an ordinary person—she probably can't hold out many more days!"