Chapter 49: Galaxian Explosion

A war-beast can provide its host with one ascendant-path martial art; lose the war-beast, and you lose the art outright—at most you keep some feel and experience from having used it.

Take Nathan: without the Comet-Gem Mantis, he could no longer use the Comet-Gem Mantis Style—at most, from memory, he could still run through a few forms. But the high-end applications—the vacuum blade-wave, the high-frequency electromagnetic blade-force—were gone for good.

He'd never imagined the Mystic-Gold iron thread could flat-out rip the Adamantine Body out of the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub.

He quietly ran the method, and a faint golden sheen, metallic-glossed, immediately rose over the Mystic-Gold skeleton bloodborn body. With his experience manipulating black-light vitae to cosplay Darth Vader, he easily shaped that golden light into the Gemini Gold Cloth.

Nathan struck a few poses, got carried away, and threw a long-distance punch at the stone wall behind the timber lodge. The Quakefist Strike, peerlessly hard and fierce, detonated its hidden force in chains, blasting a whole layer off the stone wall—honestly, a fair impression of a "Galaxian Explosion."

What had been flatly impossible before now came easy, and Nathan's heart ran light. He gave a great shout, meaning to channel the Phantomveil Vine's bond-power and throw out a "Bloodborn Sovereign Fist" too—but no sooner had he set the stance than he realized the Mystic-Gold vitae couldn't drive the Phantomveil Vine at all. That was a job only the black-light vitae could do.

"Crap! Nearly talked myself into being Saga."

Nathan laughed at himself, let the Adamantine Body's power disperse, gave what remained of the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub a brief once-over—and never bothered with the crippled war-beast again.

With that lesson learned, Nathan skipped the Fire-Swallowing Snake—both of his aether types obviously clashed with the fire element; assimilating that war-beast would've been useless as hell. The Insect Nest, though, he assimilated without breaking a sweat.

The black beetles were inseparable from the Insect Nest itself; with the Nest assimilated by the Star-Swallowing Form, they were swept up wholesale along with it.

Nathan looked inward at the black-light heart-seed: across the broad stretch of land, the gold-spear grass grew lush and thick, countless black beetles knotted into a black cloud, flitting back and forth through the air, the Insect Nest hidden inside the swarm, drifting wherever it drifted.

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Whether by intent or sheer instinct, the black beetles drifted toward the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub's remains—and, as if they'd found the sweetest feast of their lives, plunged in all at once.

Nathan didn't stop them; as far as he was concerned, the Ironweave Grub's remains were worthless now anyway.

The beetles swarmed the remains, a nonstop crunch-crack-crack in his ears; in moments they had eaten the metallic bloodborn silkworm's remains down to nothing.

As the beetles fed, Nathan suddenly sensed a backflow—streaming from the countless beetles into the Insect Nest—and the Nest promptly pinged him: "Remains of another war-beast acquired. Usable to raise Insect Nest level. Upgrade?"

Mildly surprised, he naturally didn't refuse. The moment he approved the upgrade, the war-beast began to swell, evolving from a beehive-like shape into something with head and tail—now vaguely resembling the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub—and putting out seven pairs of metallic, translucent wings that neither the Ironweave Grub nor it had ever had.

The evolved Insect Nest gave a soft cry, then spat out nearly a thousand newborn black beetles.

After linking to the war-beast by spirit-wave, Nathan quickly clocked its new state: its artificial spiritual consciousness had gone up a full grade—every capacity for steering, controlling, and messaging the black beetles dramatically optimized—and it had even merged the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub's data bank into its own artificial consciousness.

Assimilated by the Star-Swallowing Form, the Insect Nest and the black beetles alike were built of black-light vitae—but that special quality had never shown before. Now, with the Nest's artificial consciousness a grade higher, every single black beetle had gained the black-light vitae's properties.

They could pass through any material; their reconnaissance ability ran ten times what it had in Sebastian's hands; and because they could shift between solid and void, they feared almost no physical attack, their survivability soaring as well.

Nathan was thrilled beyond measure. He spent hours getting familiar with his new abilities, and only as the sky darkened did he leave the yew-wood house and head straight for Wren.

He hadn't forgotten: he still had one critically urgent piece of business—the Ironweave Grub inside his mother.

Having gotten a rough education on the Ironweave Grub from Wren, he'd known he had no way to deal with the venomous thing himself. He'd considered borrowing the Phantomveil Vine's power—but that would have been a forced gamble, a last resort. Now that Sebastian was handled, he could go ask for help openly and aboveboard.

Wren's family's bakery had already closed for the night, but the moment they saw Nathan come by, her parents warmed up a box of pastries they'd set aside for him—which left him feeling terribly awkward.

Hearing why he'd come, Wren patted her chest, visibly relieved: "So Sebastian's finally gone. With him out of the picture, leave this one to me."

Nathan lit up: "Then let's go see Granny Rowan!"

Wren snorted a laugh: "Why drag Granny Rowan into it? My mom's a great Blood Lord too! She can handle it. Granny Rowan's Between keystone—she can't leave Elderrow."

Nathan's jaw hit the floor—only now realizing how skin-deep his knowledge of the bloodborn girl still was.

Wren skipped off to fetch her mom, who soon wiped her hands, came out with her, and said with a smile: "A classmate of yours? Then of course we should help. Let's go right now. The longer a Ironweave Grub stays attached, the more it drains a person's essence and blood—nothing but aftereffects. Better out sooner than later."

Part delighted, part nervous, Nathan led Wren and her mother out of Elderrow. The whole way he had no idea what to say—and it wasn't until they were nearly at his door that it hit him: he still had no story for his mom. There was no telling her the truth—that Wren's mother had come to help remove a Ironweave Grub.

Nathan wasn't exactly quick on his feet. The more anxious he got, the less he could come up with—and the only reason he'd pulled one over on Primrose last time was that he'd run that excuse through his head a hundred times already.

All the way to the foot of his building, no good story came. Showing up with a female classmate and her parent in tow—Ironweave Grub or not—was a genuinely tough thing to explain.

He sneaked a glance at Wren and was hit by a weird feeling—like this was a chaperoned first date, the two families meeting.