Chapter 48: The Adamantine Body (Part Two)

The Adamantine Body was no ancient inherited art—it was a new-style ascendant-path martial art developed only in the last few decades, sixteen layers of method in all, Starborne-tier, billed as the most punishment-proof martial arts in the world.

And it wasn't pure body-hardening martial arts either: besides absorbing beatings, it shrugged off high heat, high pressure, strong magnetic fields, and corrosion from strong acids and poisons—a complete defensive profile, built to raise survival odds in hostile environments.

The catch: the Adamantine Body's grade was high, and as a newly developed art, its dedicated war-beast couldn't support the whole thing—this metallic bloodborn silkworm could only back the host through the first nine layers.

If the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub had been engineered a little more completely, that battle's outcome might well have been rewritten.

Sebastian had doted on this war-beast—his most-used one—and so the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub's artificial spiritual consciousness held masses of material he'd consulted day to day. To Nathan, that data was worth several times more than the Ironweave Grub itself.

A quick skim turned up one item that left a deep impression: an invitation to the Seven-Day War.

The invitation was pinned in the most prominent spot, with the highest view count—clearly something Sebastian read often.

The invitation spelled it out: invitees had to form their own teams, five to a unit, and enter the Hollow Prison to seize bloodborn-held territory. Take a target and hold it for seven days, and you'd earn one Wishfruit.

Nathan didn't have much taste for endless fighting—he'd had more than his fill of combat lately and wanted a quieter life—so after a brief pang of curiosity, he let its secrets go.

Sebastian was dead. However badly the Order of the Deathless acolyte had wanted to fight that Seven-Day War, there was no chance of Nathan fulfilling the man's dying wish for him.

He browsed the materials a while longer, found nothing particularly special, and tried driving black-light vitae into the metal armor the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub had become.

To his great surprise, the Ironweave Grub's conversion efficiency for black-light vitae was terrible: his bond-power rating had broken eight thousand, but the Ironweave Grub could only convert three hundred points of it. He'd pinned real hopes on this war-beast, and an efficiency that pathetic left him badly disappointed.

Nathan thought privately: "Turns out war-beasts' aether conversion has a compatibility factor.

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Black-light vitae matched the Comet-Gem Mantis well enough that I could unlock it to Tier-Two deployment in days. It matched the Phantomveil Vine even better—Tier-Six deployment, running the Nine Shadowlashes's third change. But black-light vitae doesn't suit the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub at all, hence this pathetic trickle of a conversion rate. Zero combat value."

Disappointed, and figuring it couldn't hurt to try, Nathan drove his Mystic-Gold vitae instead.

He'd tried the Mystic-Gold vitae on the Comet-Gem Mantis and the Phantomveil Vine before: neither war-beast could convert it, and neither could even detect it.

He'd assumed this attempt would fail like all the others—only for the Mystic-Gold vitae poured into the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub to prove a flawless match.

On the Ironweave Grub's virtual light-screen, Nathan's bond-power rating kept leaping, and prompt after prompt rang in his ears: Host meets Tier-Two deployment standard... Host meets Tier-Three deployment standard... Host meets Tier-Four deployment standard... Host meets Tier-Five deployment standard... Host meets Tier-Nine deployment standard; the Adamantine Body ninth-layer form satisfied...

Nathan could no longer hold down the Mystic-Gold vitae in his body. His form abruptly ballooned; the black-light vitae was driven back into his inner crucible, curled up into a ball—and he reverted to the Mystic-Gold skeleton bloodborn body.

The metal armor formed from the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub swelled with him, even shifting its shape slightly—bulkier than before.

The Mystic-Gold skeleton bloodborn body was mighty in the extreme—over five meters tall, nearly rivaling the Comet-Gem Mantis in combat form, Mystic-Gold flames burning in its eye sockets, ferocious and savage, its aura towering.

The look alone startled even him; he very nearly missed the spirit-wave the war-beast Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub was transmitting.

"Host now meets all deployment conditions for the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub. The Adamantine Body opened to the ninth layer!"

Nathan sucked in a sharp breath, and the moment he spoke it came out in a deep, muffled rumble: "Never thought the Mystic-Gold vitae would fit the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub this well—full power out of this war-beast."

A single Mystic-Gold iron thread extended out of the skeleton bloodborn body and bored into the metal armor the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub had become.

Nathan was completely thrown. He'd never imagined this bizarre heart-seed would refine the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub on its own: for every fraction it extended, the metal armor shifted a hair—outright, nakedly stealing control away from the black-light heart-seed.

The black-light vitae had no interest in fighting for it, retreating inch by inch and letting the Mystic-Gold vitae flood into the Ironweave Grub.

As the Mystic-Gold iron thread's erosion worked through it, the metallic bloodborn silkworm shifted from dark gold to Mystic-Gold, countless fine black lines roaming over its body.

The Mystic-Gold vitae surged in with zero restraint, quickly passing the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub's limits, bursting the war-beast apart into dissolution; the metal armor cracked and split into dozens of pieces—and for the first time Nathan saw the war-beast's countless exquisite inner mechanisms.

The Mystic-Gold iron thread was like a picky gourmet: it swallowed the aether-conversion system and the combat system whole, and didn't so much as glance at the rest of the non-combat architecture.

Having eaten its portion of the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub, it actually gained yet another layer of runes—this layer wasn't stable yet, still shifting continuously, and it could even replicate itself, growing more and more.

After half a minute or so, the layer's shifting finally wound down, and a brand-new formula took form.

Nathan had never dreamed the Mystic-Gold iron thread had abilities this uncanny.

The new Adamantine Body ran eighteen layers in all, more perfect than the Order of the Deathless's original transmission—defense up at least sixty percent at the same tier.

The art's biggest upgrade was in aether conduction. In the original, the method's defenses were so strong they formed an invisible shield—an invisible shield that didn't just block most attacks—it also made it hard for the host's own power to get out. That trait cost the Adamantine Body a lot of attack power and dragged down footwork badly, leaving the host on the clumsy side.

The Mystic-Gold iron thread's improved Adamantine Body had none of that flaw: Mystic-Gold vitae conducted through it tens of times faster, in fact—though only the Mystic-Gold vitae could conduct through it at all. Every other kind of vitae failed.