Chapter 29: The Dark-Gold Spear

Nathan tucked the black runes into his palm, and something suddenly stirred in him again—he'd noticed that after swallowing that great stretch of land and pale-gold grass, his bond-power was creeping upward too. Overjoyed beyond all expectations, he stopped holding back anything, poured out every last drop of his bond-power, and drove the Star-Swallowing Form again.

In one go he devoured a stretch of land and pale-gold grass a good half-hectare and more across, right up until his heart-seed felt stuffed full, and only then, reluctantly, did he stop "dining," calling out: "the Comet-Gem Mantis! Scan my bond-power rating."

The emerald light-screen popped up in front of him, and the war-beast quickly delivered its result: the host's bond-power rating had grown to seven thousand one hundred fifty.

That result had Nathan beside himself. In just this little stretch of time, his bond-power rating had rocketed by over a thousand. If he could physically have crammed down any more, he'd absolutely have gone all in—every fraction of strength was one more ounce of backbone for standing up to Sebastian.

"The Titan Godslayer Canon can't strengthen the body, and it's nothing like the Comet-Gem Mantis's emerald vitae, matchlessly sharp and combat-ready—but the Star-Swallowing Form it drives turns out to have a use this wonderful. What an unexpected windfall. Shame the Star-Swallowing Form also assimilates: anything swallowed into the heart-seed gets its nature changed. Otherwise, wouldn't the black-light heart-seed just become a storage vault?"

A vague grab, and a dark-gold "spear" appeared in his hand. The strange grass, run through the Star-Swallowing Form's assimilation, had long since changed at the root—sleeker than the original, and sturdier and sharper too. A flick of his nail rang a metallic note off the shaft; swung around, it handled little different from an ordinary spear, weight, length, and balance all sitting right in his hand. He'd never trained spear technique a day in his life, but with a few days of Comet-Gem Mantis Style behind him, he could manage a few passable swings—still far better than bare hands.

When Nathan eased his grip, the dark-gold "spear" vanished—reappearing on that patch of land inside his heart-seed, still growing lush and full of life. He summoned it back and forth several times and found the weapon obeyed him like a well-trained limb, answering just like that.

And that wasn't all. When he drove it with black-light vitae, the dark-gold spear all but leapt from his palm; one soft shout, and it flew lightning-fast, streaking a full thousand paces before its momentum played out and it dropped to the ground.

The distance thinned his sense of the dark-gold spear considerably, but with his mind focused, it took only a little while for the spear to rise slowly off the ground, dissolve into a streak of black aether, come racing back, and settle into his palm again.

These dark-gold spears born of the strange grass weren't exactly top-shelf in quality, but their numbers were enormous, their convenience outrageous, and their tricks many—absolutely capable of serving as a game-changing trump card in a fight.

One pull, and the mass of black aether turned back into a dark-gold spear. Brimming with confidence, he shouldered the "spear" and set out to explore this "world."

This abandoned Between!

Sebastian's hell-mode training had force-fed combat experience into Nathan, but he wasn't a true soldier, and he was no seasoned adventurer either. When it came to exploring a danger-infested Between, he had zero experience—and not one thought for how much attention all the racket he'd kicked up was drawing from the bloodborn beasts.

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He hadn't gone far from the abandoned Between's entrance before three ape-like bloodborn beasts began quietly tailing him.

Sebastian had done plenty of homework toward exploring this desolate Between—like teaching Nathan how to sweep an area so nothing got missed. Nathan wasn't wandering at random: following Sebastian's spiral search pattern, he used the Between entrance as his center and expanded his search ring by ring.

That searching method limited the search area at the start, but it paid a bonus dividend too: after two loops, Nathan spotted—none too far off, on the route his previous ring had taken—big, messy paw prints. Inexperienced as he was, something still smelled wrong. A brief hesitation, and he released several dozen black beetles.

The black beetles scattered in every direction, and within just a few minutes Nathan gave a slight start: there in his eyes appeared the image of three ape-like bloodborn beasts, creeping along with the utmost care. Their paws had to be padded—dead silence in their movement—and their fur was near the color of the dirt. Even at close range, they were brutally hard to spot.

Nathan closed his eyes, smiled faintly, and with one sweep of his hand sent several dozen masses of black aether sinking into the ground, continuing the search onward.

Ten-odd minutes after he'd moved on, the three ape-like bloodborn beasts tracked him down on their keen noses. Then they abruptly sensed that the aura in this spot was especially rich, and couldn't resist lingering, patrolling the area for a while.

Just as they found nothing out of place and prepared to take up the trail again, dozens of sharp dark-gold spears burst out of the ground and ran all three beasts through at once. The three bloodborn beasts let out long, furious howls, startling a dozen-odd bloodborn beasts in the distance into answering roars—and the silent Between promptly boiled over.

By now far away, Nathan saw the mirror-image of the distant scene appear in his eyes again. He had zero interest in the three already-dead beasts—just gave a soft heh-heh and carried on searching.

The black beetles left behind on watch suddenly buzzed their wings, droning a low-frequency hum—and the dozens of dark-gold spears skewering the three ape-like beasts all at once collapsed into black aether, curling up into the sky, where they were slurped down by the dozens of beetles.

Having swallowed the black aether from the collapsed dark-gold spears, the beetles turned and raced off after Nathan.

Two hours into the search, Nathan suddenly perked up: buildings appeared in his eyes, standing tall on the boundless grassland. Ragged as they looked, at least it was a change of scenery.

Without a second's hesitation, he changed course toward those distant ruined buildings, and before long he came upon a broken-down village.

Who knew how long this village had sat abandoned—no bird, no soul, all kinds of ruined houses looming in shadow, grim and creepy as could be. Nathan dithered a good while, but gritted his teeth, screwed his courage up, and pressed on.

Who knew how many years since anyone had lived in this village—wild grass everywhere, and the night wind moaning ooooh through the houses, spine-crawling stuff.

Nathan not only released another few dozen black beetles but powered up the Comet-Gem Mantis as well, using the war-beast's built-in radar to scan the village for anything worth noting.

This black-tech product scanned for a few minutes and, amazingly, slapped three treasure-chest markers onto the emerald light-screen...