Chapter 60: Awakened Weapons

The Hourbound Grove's terrain was nearly all plains, with only slight hills at the two farthest ends—roughly two to three hundred square kilometers, no lakes or rivers, an "island" shaped almost exactly like a paramecium.

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

Of the eighteen Sealing Platforms on the chain-quest scroll, eight sat near these two palace ruins, the Drakefern seal among them. By the scroll's hints, that Sealing Platform held at least a thousand-plus Drakefern plants. With time in the Hourbound Grove flowing twenty times faster than outside, those plants were certainly past the century mark—several centuries was entirely possible.

The one thing Nathan couldn't be sure of: Drakefern needed a night of thunder and rain to molt into dragons, and he didn't know whether the Hourbound Grove met that condition.

If it did have thunderstorms, what he'd be facing might not be a thousand-plus plants of Drakefern, but a thousand-plus grass dragons.

A grass dragon was no low-grade bloodborn thing like Drakefern—lowest tier of dragon-kind, true, but far nastier than an ordinary bloodborn beast. One grass dragon of matching rank could kill five or six of them; it stood about level with the red-furred ape Nathan had killed. A thousand-plus grass dragons, and even with Nathan's strength having exploded ten-odd-fold since then, even with a Blood Lord-tier war-beast like the Phantomveil Vine, all he could do was run for his life.

Still, it wasn't like Nathan had no plan. He'd gamed out the worst case—unleash a thousand-plus grass dragons and bolt immediately. The dragons certainly wouldn't cluster in one spot; once free, they'd scatter everywhere, and he could perfectly well spend a month or two hunting them down one at a time—one-on-one, these grass dragons wouldn't scare him. Crude plan, but Nathan still rated its feasibility pretty high.

The Phantomveil Vine, drifting through the void at full pace, was genuinely quick—only a few minutes and it had reached the destination.

It was also Nathan's first visit to these two palace ruins. Catching sight of them from afar, he felt a genuine pang. These ruins were no grand palace halls, sure, but they were still the Citadel Sovereign's back garden in its day—the Citadel Sovereign might well have rested within them—and now they'd crumbled to this. Hard not to sigh.

Nathan wasn't an especially sentimental person, though; he sighed briefly, picked the palace on the right per the scroll's map, and steered the Phantomveil Vine in toward it.

Just as Nathan closed on the palace ruins, a streak of white light suddenly shot skyward and came smashing down at his head.

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Nathan got the shock of his life. The chain-quest scroll had never mentioned these two palace ruins—he'd had no idea there was danger inside. He frantically steered the Phantomveil Vine to intercept, but couldn't stop it: that white light was sharp beyond measure, cutting through twelve of the Phantomveil Vine's tendrils in a row without the slightest loss of speed.

No time to dodge, no time even to drive the Orbis war-beast to swallow the attack—all he could do was throw up the Adamantine Body and take the white light head-on. The Adamantine Body, driven to its ninth layer, took the strike with a booming, drum-deep report.

The Ennead Crucible–driven the Adamantine Body's defense ran far beyond even the Hundred-Refined Ironweave Grub Sebastian had wielded back then—yet the white light still knocked Nathan flying. He tumbled dozens of meters in the most ragged shape of his life, spat several mouthfuls of blood, and felt like his organs were half-sliced-through. Even so, he kept his life. Not daring to linger, he gave a sharp shout; the Phantomveil Vine obediently scooped up its master and used the gap to retreat several hundred meters.

The white light, having batted Nathan away, looped once through the air and kept coming.

Nathan's retreat was fast, but the white light was no slouch either—circling, chopping down like thunder and lightning, harrying him into total disarray. Even the Phantomveil Vine couldn't block this kind of attack, so he naturally didn't dare risk his body and throw up black-light vitae as a shield. Black-light vitae wasn't omnipotent: disrupt it with a foreign bond-power, and even in black-light form his true form would take grievous wounds. All he could do was drive the Orbis war-beast to swallow that white light.

The white light seemed to have some wariness of the Orbis too, but it was sharply intelligent—as if it knew the Orbis's swallow-and-release range was only five meters. It simply refused to enter that circle, flitting and dancing around Nathan, weaving in and out.

Nathan didn't dare press the fight either, backing away the whole way—only when he'd retreated nearly a full kilometer did the white light slow enough for the boy to see it clearly: a war saber of archaic, plain design.

"What kind of bloodborn is this? Weapons can become spirits too?"

Nathan honestly had no answer for this kind of "awakened weapon." The thing had no weak points anywhere—its body WAS the weapon, plus it flew light as a feather. If his Sleeve-Vault spell were stronger, its swallow-range a few times wider, he could try sealing the saber; but the Sleeve-Vault that came with his Orbis war-beast only covered five meters—nowhere near enough to seal a "awakened weapons" like this.

The archaic saber's chase past the one-kilometer mark grew slower and slower; after tangling with Nathan a while, it suddenly wheeled around and returned, vanishing into the ruins in a blink—no continued pursuit after all.

Nathan didn't dare push deeper into these ruins. He thought a while, then turned and headed for the other palace ruin instead—no Drakefern there, but it held the Sealing Platform for the Hourlost Bloom, another of the ascendant seeds the Raging Gale wanted.

This time he brought twelve-tenths caution, none of the swagger of a moment ago.

Near the second palace ruin, Nathan released ten-odd black beetles to probe inside. The beetles hadn't gone deep before a zing-zing-zing of ringing metal rose, and a total of three weapons came flying out of the ruins.

Those three weapons were: a giant axe the size of a tabletop, spinning up into the sky as a flying wheel; a strange weapon that looked like a long sword but had a finger-thick blade, edges on both sides, and a flat, unsharpened tip; and a narrow-bladed longsword, streaking like lightning and rainbow, grander in bearing than both the axe and the other oddity.

Nathan hadn't expected this ruin to hold "awakened weapons" too—THREE of them, far outnumbering the other ruin. It shook him badly. He feinted twice, used the black beetles to lure the three "awakened weapons" away, and hastily pulled back to a distance; riding the Phantomveil Vine's gift for stealthy evasion, he got clean away.

Those three weapons didn't chase far either; past the one-kilometer mark, they all pulled back.

Nathan stared wistfully after the three "awakened weapons" vanishing into the depths of the ruins, his face souring, muttering to himself: "How do you even kill this kind of bloodborn? No openings anywhere, crazy mobility—these are basically ascendant-style flying blades. I can't levitate weapons to fight back. Against enemies like these, there's no fight to be had at all."