Just as Ves dismissed the danger his cat was in, Venerable Zimro Belson grew incredibly nervous as he awaited the most critical step of the new plan. He did not know whether to believe in the claims of his patriarch. He may have grown a lot more familiar with the Phobos and the Geist System in the months since he became a proper expert pilot, but he did not understand anything about how his fiends worked. Zimro couldn't even control them that much. The Geist System might restrain them and force them to act according to orders, but it was not capable of giving the expert pilot direct control over the actions of his own army of nefarious ghosts. At most, Zimro was able to exert a bit of influence over them by using his true resonance as leverage. "Do you think that Nosferatu will be able to pass through?" The pilot asked. "He will." The energy manifestation of Ves said in a fairly confident tone. "I am more concerned about what comes next. He will be on his own from this point onwards. Will he have the strength to drain the vitality of a puelmer, or will he get defeated in the end?" Nosferatu had slowly drifted close enough to attempt the crossing. As his form slowly passed through the powerful transphasic energy shield in front, his shape quickly grew fuzzier while his spike-filled mouth uttered a silent cry of pain! "Damn, it's not working as well as I hoped." Ves frowned. "It turns out that death energy can't completely pass through transphasic energy shields after all. Compared to the more powerful and concentrated death energy attacks, Nosferatu is a lot weaker and less fragile. It doesn't take as much effort to destabilize his intangible form." The state of the poor fiend had deteriorated a lot all of a sudden. Nosferatu's responsiveness had dropped a lot since he was drained of life, but the damage dealt by the transphasic energy shield to his intangible form seemed to kick in his drive to survive. The spiritual fiend sped up his passage and managed to make it to the other side intact! The only problem was that the fiend had lost a lot of strength in the process! The undead fiend had grown so weak and feeble that it looked as if a single gust of wind could cause him to break apart and drift away! Venerable Zimro tried to resonate harder with the Geist System, but there was a limit to how extensively this weird module could reinforce the strength of a fiend. "You can't do much to boost Nosferatu on this end." Ves told the expert pilot. "Perhaps the story might be different if you have invested an Ascension Rune in the Path of the Ghost King or the Path of the Soul Reaper. I can understand why you chose to prioritize the Path of the Hidden Stalker first." If the Phobos hadn't become so good at hiding himself, the puelmer heavy cruiser may have captured the expert mech's traces by this time! Ves would have never allowed his precious stealth asset to stray so close to a technologically sophisticated warship if he did not have sufficient confidence in the cloaking effectiveness of his latest masterwork mech. However, an expert stealth mech that was only good at hiding himself and nothing more was ultimately not that useful. What mattered was what the Phobos could do when he was able to sneak in position. The lack of focused strengthening on the Geist System and its collection of fiends turned into a critical shortcoming at this stage. Compared to many of the older and more experienced third order living mechs, the Phobos was still a baby in relative terms. Sending out the Phobos to sabotage a puelmer homeship that was on full alert was like dispatching a low-level game character on a high-level mission! Ves would have felt a lot more comfortable if the Phobos had double the amount of Ascension Runes. Unfortunately, there was no way to speed up their formation all that much. The Greater Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra that he had gifted his third order living mechs enabled them to cultivate and grow stronger at a faster rate, but it wasn't specifically tied into his Ascension Paths at the moment. While the cultivation method did contribute to the formation of Ascension Runes, the efficiency was far too low for his liking. Ves needed to work out the cultivation methods of his mechs further in order to ensure that his third-order living mechs would be able to develop their potential a lot faster. All of his living mechs but especially his third order ones could vary dramatically in power and capabilities depending on how extensively they had grown! The older and more advanced their cultivation, the more they were able to undertake tasks that would have stumped their non-living equivalents! "Nosferatu is about to penetrate through the hull of the puelmer heavy cruiser." Venerable Zimro quietly reported. "Understood." Ves nodded. "Make sure to nudge him to the bow section of the alien vessel. There should be relatively fewer puelmer crew members over there as there shouldn't be anything too important on the top decks." The layout of puelmer homeships resembled that of the nunsers and many other races. They were built like towers, though they usually adopted a horizontal orientation when they traveled in space. Compared to the battleships built by many other races, the puelmers liked to keep their homeships relatively small and compact. It did not take long for Nosferatu to phase through the outer hull layers of the alien warship. Although the ship was highly active and powered a lot of different systems, the undead fiend was able to avoid most of them while shrugging off the rest. Once Nosferatu got inside, the fiend looked lost for a time. The interior of the puelmer warship was a lot more cramped and compact than the ships of many other races. The main reason for that was because the puelmers were small in stature! As a race that looked like leathery balls with lots of tiny hands poking from across their surface, there was no need for them to design interiors with high ceilings. In fact, the puelmers deliberately lowered the ceilings of the corridors and compartments of their homeships as much as possible to frustrate boarding actions! The only way for other alien races, especially the taller and larger ones like the nunsers, to successfully capture and secure a puelmer homeship was to dispatch small bots, but they rarely worked out well as the puelmers had a million different ways to interfere and glitch their electronic systems. Yet for all of the puelmer preoccupation for making their small homeships as intrusion proof as possible, their measures did not hinder Nosferatu's passage in the slightest! After the fiend managed to regain his wits in this strange and foreign environment, he began to drift towards the nearest source of life that he could detect. As a creature dominated by the death element, Nosferatu's sensitivity towards life had become exceptionally more pronounced. Even if his intelligence and sentience had degenerated by a large extent, he still retained a part of his most basic survival instincts. Right now, Nosferatu had become so incomparably weak that he would probably dissipate on his own within an hour or less. Speed was of the essence! The ghostly apparition proceeded to phase through multiple bulkheads and drop through the deck in order to reach a compartment that looked to house a few segmented energy shield generators. Sabotaging these shield generators would likely lessen the frontal defensive cover of the puelmer warship. It would have been interesting for the fiends of the Geist Systems to sabotage these crucial shield generators, but right now Nosferatu only wanted to drain the vitality of one of the puelmer engineers on duty in this compartment. Yet as the invisible and unnoticeable fiend drifted closer to the ball-like alien and attempted to phase into the center where the brain was located, Nosferatu quickly pulled back in pain! The puelmers weren't individually strong as a race, but the undead fiend had lost so much power that he couldn't even overcome the instinctive defenses of his prey at the time! The alien engineer meanwhile stopped in his work and rolled back a bit. "Kheayua?" As the puelmer expressed his confusion about why he suffered a small ache all of a sudden, Nosferatu fled the compartment and built up a bit more distance. The spiritual entity had sustained even more damage in his failed attempt to overpower the spirit of a puelmer! His lifespan had dropped even further. At this time, he had become so weak and fragile that it looked as if he might not last longer than 20 or so minutes. The closer he came to death, the more Nosferatu became driven to solve his lack of energy and vitality. The fiend drifted from compartment to compartment in search of life that was weak enough for him to tap. It was hard. The puelmer heavy cruiser was only populated by puelmers. While they varied a bit in strength, each of them were healthy and possessed an aggressive mindset, which was fitting for soldiers. None of them were weak enough to give Nosferatu any hope of salvation! As the undead spirit continued to lose more strength, his senses finally managed to pick up much weaker sources of vitality. Compared to the many other puelmer crew members aboard the alien vessels, the latest cluster of life were in much poorer condition! Nosferatu soon emerged from what looked like a cross behind a prison and a slaughterhouse! The stench of alien blood spread across the room as half-a-dozen or so puelmers aimlessly moaned in pain while they were hanging onto meat hooks extended from the slightly higher ceiling. The puelmers stood out by their cruelty. They were just as heartless to themselves as they were to the members of other races! They dealt harshly with any criminals in their ranks. The most preferred punishment entailed hanging the puelmers onto hooks and cutting bits and pieces of their skin and flesh over time. While the puelmers were omnivores, they preferred to eat meat whenever possible. Many puelmers happened to delight in eating the flesh of their victims! Even if the taste of meat of their own species was not as palatable as that of others, their culture encouraged them to eat the bodies of their own kind under certain conditions! At this time, the conditions of the six rule-breaking puelmers were mixed. One of them had clearly been hung less than a day ago given that he only missed a modest part of his skin. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺 Several more were in fairly weaker conditions as they had probably been put up for about a week. Two more were in terrible conditions. Their skins and hands had all been carved away. Many of their organs had been at least partially sliced away as well. The fact that they were still alive was a testament of the medical technology of the puelmer race! Yet even if they managed to stay alive after suffering all of this torture, the half-cannibalized aliens would rather have their torment come to an end! It just so happened that a certain fiend might be able to oblige. The hungry spiritual entity instinctively drew towards the weakest condemned puelmer and took a risk by invading the alien's mutilated body. Different from before, Nosferatu did not encounter nearly as much resistance as before. The puelmer's lack of vitality along with his sincere desire for death had not only made him open to invasion, but also caused the poor alien to welcome anything that would deliver him to the waiting arms of death! As the undead fiend began to sink his intangible claws into the spirit of the dying puelmer, only relief and satisfaction radiated from the punished alien. Meanwhile, Nosferatu immediately gained a substantial boost of strength! The injection of just a minor amount of vitality was enough to undo a modest amount of damage and amplify his meager strength to an impressive degree! When Nosferatu finally sucked the puelmer dry, his senses already shifted to the five other prisoners hanging from their own hooks. The buffet had just begun!