Green Vine Sphere

Green Vine Sphere is the core culmination of Vanderman's life’s work, it can continue to synthesize spore-like seeds, attaching onto other people and absorb that person’s strength and power to grow. When it reaches a growth threshold, it will become living body armor. The point is, this layer of armor can equip regular people with the properties of the Totem’s Light.

It look like a goose-egg-sized oval-shaped ball. The ball’s body was green and black, its surface seemingly glowing with a faint gleam of green. The whole Green Vine Sphere was like a green ball of thread with claws and teeth, bits of thread sticking out everywhere. Garen walked over. He smashed the glass with a bam, and reached his hand in directly, fishing the Green Vine Sphere out and pressing it onto his shoulder. The Green Vine Sphere waved its green tentacles around madly, rapidly piercing them into the flesh on Garen’s shoulder, and had completely melted into him in no time.

Garen sat on his Palace Master’s throne, carefully playing with the Green Vine Sphere in his hand. This little thing was like a small animal, crawling from his left hand to his left shoulder. After he caught it and put it on the back of his hand, it began to crawl towards his left shoulder tirelessly again. Garen kept bringing it down, and watching as it kept crawling up.

## Black Fire Guards

Walking out of the palace hall, on the way to the conference hall, many Black Fire Guards walked out of the surrounding corners in the Black Fire Palace. Some of these guards seemed to walk straight out of the dense foliage, out of the shadows. Garen walked towards the garden and the flowers, and suddenly countless green plants grew madly, twisting and twining, rapidly forming a silhouette that quickly grew a suit of heavy black armor as though growing fruits.

Within several minutes, the plants in the garden grew into a brand new Black Fire Palace guard, who followed closely behind Garen. Holding the Green Vine Sphere in his hand, he had already completely understood how the Black Fire Guards were formed. In other words, the Green Vine Sphere gathered plants to form a body. They needed a plant called varde flowers, and would rapidly hasten the plants’ roots to create the Black Fire Palace Guards.

The Black Fire Guard was completely covered by the suit of armor, and the insides couldn’t be seen, so nobody knew that there weren’t any humans inside their armor, but a congregation of plants instead.

The Green Vine Spheres could only make two hundred Black Fire Guards at any one time, four of them Form Three, also known as the Four Guards, while rest were all Form Two. Their weakness was that they were individually rather weak, but their strength was that they were never afraid of death at any time, and their self-destruct ability was powerful.

Garen had almost used up all the varde flowers in the Black Fire Palace, before he managed to scrape out the numbers for the Black Fire Guards again. At the same time, he needed to have his servants plant more varde flowers, stimulating them with a special method, a single varde flower only needed two months to bloom, spreading their vines everywhere. And he only needed ten flowers to form one Black Fire Guard.

Other than the Black Fire Guards he sent out, Garen had recreated more than a hundred Black Fire Guards here in the Black Fire Palace, sending them to all parts of the palace, to amp up defense together with the Silver Palace Guards.

## Zibane Power

The Green Vine Sphere began to undergo encryption measures. The principle of the Green Vine Sphere used parasites in reality, and would implant tiny spores into non-living things. These spores would progressively change the structure of these non-living things, and would release a special active substance known as **Zibane** at the same time. They already possessed strong contagious natures and viability, and their size was also smaller compared to other types of bacteria. They could almost be compared to viruses.

The strangest thing about these substances was that once they were mixed with specialized techniques, they could be arranged into a sphere-like structure, like countless wireless receivers that could accept certain types of nerve signals and neurotransmitters. They would follow the commands of the nerve signals to infect and infiltrate. In simpler terms, the Green Vine Sphere could make objects into Totems that would still be under the command of their masters.

People who wore equipment that was made into Totems by the Green Vine Sphere, would actually need to be connected to the equipment through their flesh. The energy that they used looked like Totem Light, but was actually a type of energy that was closer to the active substances of the Totem Light’s Polluting Power. This strength was named **Zibane Power** by Vanderman.

Thus, they were able to turn their surrounding substances into Totems within a designated span of time, except that this Totem-inducing time was very short. However, the time needed for the **Zibane Power** to infect others required a high level of spirit control, and without spirit control, this strength would not be able to infect others automatically.

However, Garen was satisfied despite this. The Green Vine Sphere gave regular people a chance to become strong. As long as your spirit and physical body were strong enough, even if you did not have Totem User Appraisal, as long as you had a Green Vine Sphere, you would be able to reach a powerful level. This was a brand new strength system, just like Totem Power!

No wonder Obscuro Society, Royal Alliance, and Terraflor Society all wanted to seize this technology. Within the Green Vine Sphere’s system, one’s spirit would decide the Zibane Power’s level and strength, and after offsetting the nature of the gap, the physical body’s strength would determine the gap between each other.

Garen arranged everything carefully and came to a conclusion. "In other words, after obtaining the Green Vine Sphere’s **Zibane Power**, spirit will would largely decide the class, like Form 1, 2, and 3 of Totems. Meanwhile, the physical body would decide the strength difference between classes."

While he encrypted the Green Vine Sphere, Garen also allowed it to implant itself completely into his right shoulder. However, this technology could not be directly announced, because it would be a large impact against the entire Totem User system. **Zibane Power’s** activation also needed certain requirements from his will and spirit strength. It required extremely high spirit levels to be activated.

But this final research was impactful towards the Totem User system, as Totem systems were the foundation of the aristocracy’s control over the world, and if it was discovered, it would surely become the target of public criticism.

### Limitations

"There are some defects apparently…" He furrowed his eyebrows and murmured softly. "The roots of the Green Vine Sphere can only support fifty-three divisions of **Zibane Power**. It can only forge fifty-three sets of weapons or armor to be made into Totems. No wonder… No wonder there were only two hundred Black Fire Guards. This was also the best result that could be obtained when Avic integrated his cutting-edge technology carefully. Nearly four times of increment would be enough to frighten most people."

"Two hundred Black Fire Guards, giving up their control would mean obtaining two hundred sets of Black Fire armor. It would grant normal people Totem Power traits. This was the foundation, and geniuses with strong wills and strong bodies would be able to truly activate the Black Fire Armor."

Garen picked up the pauldron in front of him, and illuminated the surface carefully, as many faint silver dots began to light up on it, showing the characteristics of **Zibane Power** after its activation.

"Zibane Power requires strong to reach activation; the stronger the will, the greater the power that can be controlled, allowing Zibane’s activation to become stronger, thus strengthening its infectiousness as well. This beneficial cycle made it like a seed, the more substances it absorbed from the outside, the stronger its main body and armor would become."

"Avic gave up on this potential, and used the absolute loyalty of the corpse-like Black Fire Guards instead. But this kind of power was ultimately too small." Garen shook his head. "If those with weak wills received the armor, they would be swallowed by the **Zibane Powe**r in the end, turning into the living dead. They would lose their whole personality. This thing seems to be extremely dangerous."

He began to think about ways to solve this danger, and after some thinking, he thought of more than ten plans, but still had no clue. Vanderman had researched this level for many years, but had yet to find a conclusion. The people in the Royal Alliance had no conclusions either, thus it was natural for him to not be able to even touch the sidelines when he was working alone.

"No matter, to gain power, one must surely be aware that a price must be paid in exchange." Garen exhaled.

To gain two hundred sets of heavy Black Fire armor would mean that two hundred people would have to be chosen as the carriers of the heavy black armor, to walk on the path towards strengthening oneself.

In other words, Garen would not be able to ultimately command these people. He only had the right to recover the **Zibane Power**, but if someone was strengthened to a powerful degree, even if the strength was recovered, his power would still remain. The physical characteristics that were altered by **Zibane** would not change.

It meant that even if more than half of the strength was recovered, it would still remain. This way, his control of his subordinates would not be as tight anymore. But Garen was unconcerned. The only thing that he wanted was power, and strength that was sufficient enough. Whether or not he could grasp it, depended on his own abilities.

## Links and References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Chapter 348
2. ↑ Chapter 442
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Chapter 443
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Chapter 449
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 Chapter 450