Chapter 21: Turning Defeat into Victory

Nathan's soul practically fled his body on the spot. Without a thought, he took off running—but the instant he slammed into the stone circle, an invisible force bounced him right back. That force was like an invisible wall, impossible to cross. He tried again and again, from several angles, and couldn't break out; only then did he understand there was serious method in the circle Sebastian had built.

Sebastian casually undid the sigil and the big hole in the stone wall vanished on the spot. He said, looking totally relaxed: "I've summoned this Red Howl out of the abandoned Between. Today's training item is—kill it!"

Before Nathan could even get a protest out, the red-furred bloodborn lunged at him. All he could do was hurl himself sideways, dodging the creature's bite, and take off at a dead sprint. With the circle Sebastian had built from stones, there was no escaping—he could only run loops inside it. The Red Howl didn't seem able to leave the circle either; it chased him for dear life and never spared so much as a glance for Sebastian, right there within arm's reach.

Nathan's voice was shaking with terror as he howled at the top of his lungs: "What? Kill it? Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to kill that thing?"

Sebastian said, grinning: "I gave you the Comet-Gem Mantis itself. If you still can't kill a Red Howl, you wouldn't survive going into the abandoned Between anyway—might as well die now. At least getting eaten by this Red Howl leaves you a whole corpse. That abandoned Between's got way more than this one kind of bloodborn, and nastier ones too. Get done in there, and they'll be picking your pieces apart."

That one line jolted the daydreamer awake: Nathan finally remembered he had a war-beast. He fired up the Comet-Gem Mantis immediately, cranked it to max output, and whipped a backhand Ascendant Hand Ring!

The vacuum blade-wave this Ascendant Hand Ring threw out was even more dazzling than the day before—and a good foot and a half bigger.

Nathan still didn't know his bond-power rating had climbed nearly fivefold, so he chalked it up to a career-best performance. What floored him was this: the vacuum blade-wave condensed into an emerald ring and slashed into the Red Howl's body—and the red-furred beast just swayed once and took it, point blank. Where the blade landed there was only a shallow cut. It didn't care in the slightest and came lunging right back in.

Nathan's Art of the Titan Godslayer Canon had met with real success, his bond-power rating rocketing to twenty-seven hundred—but the vitae the Comet-Gem Mantis converted was only some twenty or thirty percent stronger than yesterday, completely out of proportion to the jump in his own strength.

Nathan never noticed that the war-beast's conversion efficiency was off!

"Well, crap on a crutch!"

With even the vacuum blade-wave unable to hurt the Red Howl, Nathan suddenly found himself out of options, hands and feet in total disarray, nearly getting caught by the Red Howl's lunge. Even with the war-beast backing him, he couldn't remember a single one of the Comet-Gem Mantis Style's finer uses—chased all over the ring by the beast, scrambling in the most pathetic shape, one heartbeat from disaster at every turn.

Sebastian watched from outside the circle, shook his head, and said with a sigh: "Every bloodborn beast is thick-hided and tough-muscled. You've got to find the Red Howl's weak spot before you can land a killing blow."

With Sebastian's pointer, Nathan had at least the ghost of a plan—but there was no way on earth he'd brawl hand-to-hand with the Red Howl. So he ran laps at full sprint while spraying vacuum blade-waves every which way.

Sebastian clucked his tongue a few times, caught halfway between anger and laughter: "The vacuum blade-wave is your trump card—key moments only! Spraying it around like this, how long do you think your bond-power lasts? A couple of shots and you'll be running on empty. Sure, you're bursting past your limits under pressure and your blade-waves are a lot stronger than yesterday's—but that's all overdraft aether you're spending."

Sebastian had sensed that Nathan's bond-power was a notch stronger than the day before, but with the Comet-Gem Mantis's conversion running under par, he just assumed the boy had squeezed out every drop of his potential with his life on the line—it never occurred to him that Nathan had been practicing the Titan Godslayer Canon, and that that was why his strength had jumped so fast.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Nathan heard the repeat warning, but he didn't feel any drain in his bond-power—if anything he felt full to bursting, like firing off a few dozen more blade-waves would be no problem at all—so he just pretended he hadn't heard.

Either way, getting up close and personal with the Red Howl was absolutely not happening—he didn't have the guts.

Sebastian had figured Nathan would run dry any second and end up cornered—instead the kid was bouncing around lively as anything, giving the Red Howl a runaround, thirty-odd vacuum blade-waves deep and still with juice to spare. He found himself clicking his tongue in amazement.

With that many blade-waves fired, Nathan's panic gradually ebbed, and he noticed something: the Red Howl took vacuum blade-waves head-on almost every time, hardly caring about attacks of that level—only when he struck the back of its neck did it swing its claws up to block. He thought quietly: "The back of this thing's neck has got to be a weak spot. That's where I should hit it."

Nathan had probed out the Red Howl's weak spot, but the red-furred bloodborn was limber beyond belief—it seemed to sense its weakness had been discovered and got extra careful, giving him no opening, and several times in a row even dangled its own weak spot as bait, nearly pouncing this "enemy" dead on the spot.

Sebastian watched for a good long while, shaking his head slightly. As far as he could see, Nathan had wasted too many openings and splurged his bond-power too freely—any chance of turning defeat into victory was thoroughly gone.

"This kid's combat experience is basically zero, and his in-the-moment adaptation is terrible too. The training's going to have to get harsher. The longer I stay on Elderrow, the bigger the odds my identity gets exposed—I can't waste too much time on this boy." Just as Sebastian concluded that Nathan was certain to lose this fight, the boy suddenly gave a sharp shout, dissolved the emerald vitae all over his body, rolled with surging black light—and, utterly fearless of death, charged in.

This was the first time in the whole fight that he went head-to-head with the Red Howl!

Nathan seemed brimming with confidence. His fist hammered into the Red Howl—and thanks to the black-light vitae's special property, the fist sank instantly deep into the Red Howl's skull. The Red Howl's counterstrike raked a claw across Nathan's body, but again thanks to the black-light vitae's special property, it failed to hurt him.

Boy and beast crossed past each other, neither managing to wound the other, both landing safe on their feet.

Nathan's face was totally relaxed—he even had the leisure to flash Sebastian a victory sign.

The Red Howl had barely touched down and was wheeling to pounce again when the violent pain inside its skull wrenched an earth-shaking howl out of the beast. Its head abruptly bulged into a great lump—and then burst like an overripe melon, bloodborn blood spraying a foot and a half high!

He'd finally killed the beast—and the last thread of strength in Nathan was spent with it. He flopped flat on the ground, too exhausted to want to move so much as half a pinky finger, but the smugness on his face was impossible to hide. His duel with the Red Howl had been life and death hanging by a single thread; for an ordinary middle schooler, that was way too dangerous an experience. Even now the muscles of his thighs and arms were still trembling nonstop—and that wasn't from the exhaustion. That was from the scare!

Sebastian watched, briefly dumbfounded, the skin of his face going faintly red: he'd actually failed to see what trick Nathan had used to turn defeat into victory and kill the Red Howl in one stroke. Sebastian wasn't about to swallow the question, of course, and asked, matter-of-factly: "How did you kill it?"

Nathan gave a sly heh-heh and answered: "Trade secret!"

Sebastian said without a second's pause: "If you won't tell, I'll summon another bloodborn beast. Run it a few more times, and I'll get a clear look at your tactics eventually."