Chapter 46: The Ironweave Grub

Nathan drove the Phantomveil Vine with everything he had—for the moment, not a sliver of strength to spare for anything else.

Strangled till his neck bones popped, Sebastian clashed his arcane against Nathan's vitae right along the Phantomveil Vine. Even poisoned by the draught, on the strength of his deep Art he held on by sheer grit—just refused to die.

A flash of savage light crossed Sebastian's eyes. He forced out one mangled syllable, and a bank of black cloud burst off his body, shrouding down over Nathan's head.

Nathan knew it was the black beetles and was about to weather them head-on with the Star-Swallowing Form—but Sebastian, having been burned once, wasn't about to get played by the same trick twice. The black beetles charged Nathan's body-shielding vitae and detonated one by one. Each beetle carried only a little arcane, but it was enough to blast apart a notch of Nathan's vitae. Hundreds of beetles popped in sequence, and in seconds Nathan was torn up from head to toe, unable even to keep his vitae up.

Sebastian gave a fierce shout and tore free of the Phantomveil Vine outright. With the draught in his system, he dared not linger in the fight—he shot skyward, set on breaking clean out of the battle.

As if Nathan would let him leave. If Sebastian found some hidden spot and neutralized the draught, that was the day of Nathan's doom.

Nathan roared, drove the Phantomveil Vine—and countless tendrils soared into the sky, seized Sebastian, and hauled the Order of the Deathless acolyte bodily back down.

At full strength, Sebastian would've had a hundred ways out. But with his spiritual power scattered and his strength beyond reach, one yank from Nathan sent him crashing to the ground—dust-caked, humiliated, a total wreck.

Nathan drove the Comet-Gem Mantis and loosed eighteen high-frequency electromagnetic blade-forces in one burst, chopping the ground into clouds of dust. He'd figured a barrage like that had to leave Sebastian badly hurt—but as the blade-forces fell, he instantly sensed something wrong. He pushed vitae into his eyes to look—and saw a halo of golden light guarding Sebastian.

Outside Sebastian's body stood a ferocious gilded grub phantom, generating an invisible shield that flat-out withstood Nathan's high-frequency electromagnetic blade-forces.

"So this is Sebastian's war-beast?"

Nathan had long known Sebastian held cards in reserve, and known he had a war-beast—but he'd never dreamed the man's war-beast was this kind of bloodborn insect, with defenses this absurd.

Scattered as Sebastian's arcane was—barely a tenth or two usable—poured into his bodyguard war-beast, the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub, it still sufficed to hold off the Comet-Gem Mantis Style's kill moves. The Comet-Gem Mantis Style, after all, was only an entry-level ascendant-path art, its power capped.

Nathan's mind spun fast. The Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub's defense was outrageous; his high-frequency electromagnetic blade-forces were useless; the Nine Shadowlashes wasn't a damage-dealer, and he'd only trained it to the third change—no point bringing it out to show off. Newly minted as a bloodborn, he had exactly one move left: the "Star-Swallowing Form."

Nathan charged in fast, set both hands on the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub's protective shield, and with everything he had, drove the Star-Swallowing Form of the Titan Godslayer Canon!

Centered on Nathan, a black-hole-like vortex bloomed at once, black-light vitae devouring in great gulps and quick sips, pitting raw bond-power against Sebastian's.

Sebastian had already suffered at the Star-Swallowing Form's hands—but with his arcane scattered, all his countless tricks were out of reach. He could only fall back on the dumbest method there was: surging whatever arcane he could still gather and shoving it over wholesale, letting Nathan devour as he pleased.

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Sebastian thought savagely: "A freshly awakened bloodborn—no way, even with an inborn inheritance, that he can out-hold decades of my hard-practiced power. Fine, let him devour. We'll see whether he drains me dry first—or whether I burst him apart first."

Once the Star-Swallowing Form was running, Nathan had no thoughts beyond it. He and Sebastian were locked in a kill-or-be-killed endgame. A quarter-hour in, he felt his inner crucible stuffed to bursting—but he showed zero sign of stopping, still driving the Star-Swallowing Form with everything.

His thinking ran nearly identical to Sebastian's: he too wanted to gamble on whether his Star-Swallowing Form would break the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub first, or Sebastian would burst him apart first.

Another moment passed, and the vitae across Nathan's whole body was boiling—the precursor of bond-power running wild. He didn't know he was on the edge of collapse, but even if he had, he wouldn't have backed off a hair: there was no road behind him. Lose, and Sebastian would exterminate his whole family. Behind his back lay nothing but a ten-thousand-foot abyss.

Blood threads seeped from Sebastian's every feature; that handsome, dashing face was now pure grotesquerie, like a bloodborn crawled straight out of hell.

Poisoned by the draught and force-driving the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub besides, Sebastian's whole body of arcane stood equally ready to shatter at any moment—and once arcane shatters, that's the legendary "aether burnout." It's the one state every magus fears most.

But Sebastian, too, was committed with no way back—like Nathan, out of options.

By now Sebastian had run through his regrets a million times over. If he'd never taken a newly born bloodborn like Nathan seriously in the first place—skipped the soft-handed approach and just brute-force suppressed the kid into working for him—the bloodborn boy would never have staked his life on rebellion.

"If I'd put in a little thought—dangled fat profits, he couldn't have said no. Or if I hadn't squeezed so hard, assuming a kid in his teens couldn't take pressure like that and would obey like a dog—if I'd eased up a little, given him some hope, he'd never have gone this all-in. I misjudged the boy. Never dreamed he had nerve like this... or that he'd hidden it from me and beaten me to subduing the Phantomveil Vine."

Regret aside, Sebastian's Art ran deep, and he could already see it: Nathan was closer to breaking than he was.

He thought privately: "Screw-up this size aside, the kid's still going to crack before I do. The moment he's done for, I take the Phantomveil Vine he subdued with zero effort—mission accomplished all the same."

Nathan bellowed and forced the Star-Swallowing Form up another class—but his vitae started bursting apart in chains. He could no longer hold human shape, collapsing into a mass of black aether; only the skull, protected by the Mystic-Gold iron thread, kept its form.

The vitae that had always run icy-cold was somehow getting hotter and hotter; he could no longer suppress that "boiling" feeling. His senses were shutting down one by one—touch, hearing, sight, heat and cold, taste, smell, light and dark... everything going numb by degrees, until even thought and consciousness began to blur.

He had no idea what state he was in, but he knew one thing: he was in very, very bad shape. Keep forcing the Star-Swallowing Form, and the surging vitae would leave him without so much as a grave.

But Nathan had no regret whatsoever. The iron and fire in his nature became the Star-Swallowing Form's final fuel.

From inside Nathan's body came a sudden crack...

The black-light heart-seed was crumbling!