CHAPTER 58: EBEN & THE PHANTOM BLOOM (1)

After delivering the good news, Eben promised Ash that his men would pick him up later in the evening to take him to the hidden venue.

"I wanted to pick you up myself, but our secret cooperation and the truth might come out faster than you planned if I did, boss."

"I understand, Eben. No worries. You know the politics of the slums much better than I do. I’ll trust you to deal with the details.

Just stick to your plan until I say otherwise."

Eben nodded his head and then looked at Ash with stars brimming in his eyes.

It took Ash a few seconds to realize what the man was doing.

"Oh! I remember, of course, here’s your gift!"

Ash scanned his memories for the suiting disease for the mental type awakened in front of him.

He was tempted to check whether Eben would be able to receive a tier 3 disease and live to enjoy the benefits it gave.

But Ash didn’t want to play with fire yet.

First of all, he didn’t want to unnecessarily kill a family member because of his curiosity. And he also would be in a lot of trouble if the leader of one of the three main gangs of the slums suddenly disappeared.

So to be safe, Ash decided to give Eben a tier 2 disease instead.

Jack had proven himself to be able to handle a tier 2 disease just fine despite being a tier 2 awakened. In fact, he had his body awakened to a tier 3 awakened from his gifts.

And to make it even safer, Ash picked an ability that wasn’t too far off from Eben’s ability.

The disease he picked was none other than one of his favorites to use, the phantom bloom.

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Phantom Bloom

A neurohallucinogenic disease brewed from hallucinogen venom and floral hemotoxins. Breaks down mental cohesion and shatters spatial perception.

+Symptoms:

-Neural Bloom Echoes: Sensory feedback splits, creating delayed phantom movements.

-Petal-Warp Hallucinations: Vision is overtaken by blooming hallucinations—flowering doubles, terrain distortions.

-Pulse Misfire: Victim responds to nonexistent stimuli, mistaking illusions for real threats.

+Ability Unlocked: Hollowgrin Mirage (Active)

Fire a venomous thorn that causes powerful visual and sensory hallucinations. Victims see multiple Ash clones, false attacks, or visual warping and reduced spatial awareness. Stacks increase confusion and pain response.

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It was a type of mind-affecting ability, but it didn’t depend too much on the user’s own mind to activate.

Different from Eben’s ability which needed his full concentration to use, the phantom bloom would enable Eben to incapacitate even more people without wasting his limited focus on them.

He could just fire the venomous thorns again and again towards his enemies until the venom stacked up and they began attacking phantom targets and dodging nonexistent attacks.

Using the venomous thorns to buy time for himself to finish the stronger enemies with his awakened ability, Eben was now much harder to kill.

Well, except someone physically strong like Jack showed up, used twitchstep, and caved in Eben’s skull from behind.

If that happened, then there wouldn’t even be a time for Eben to say his goodbye.

Not that Ash prayed something like that would happen, though. Eben was now also a part of his family, and he needed to keep him safe.

He thought about giving the steelbark as a protection for Eben, but the effect of such a physically altering venom needed to be studied first before someone with a naturally weaker physique like Eben tried conquering it.

So for now, Ash just pricked Eben with a thorn laced with the phantom bloom and wrapped him inside a cage of thornless vines.

"Don’t worry, I’m trying to help you."

Even without Ash clarifying what he did, Eben still trusted Ash with all his heart. Even if he didn’t know what Ash was doing, he didn’t need to.

A blind trust was all he needed.

But after what he felt next, Eben now fully understood what Ash meant.

When the venom spread through his body, Eben could feel the familiar sense of his mind being attacked.

It wasn’t as strong as the attack Ash used on him the first time they met, but Eben strongly felt it.

Soon, the foreboding turned to reality as his vision began to change.

Flowers, petals, made out of colors that he both knew and had never seen before, filled his eyes.

In front of the vine cage, behind the vine cage, on the cage itself, on the walls of the room, on Ash’s face, even looking at his own body, everything was filled, layered with flower petals.

Everywhere his eyes looked, the blooming flowers followed him.

Soon, his mind began failing to perceive the cage in front of him or the ground beneath him.

Everything was just flowers and petals.

If not for the vine cage giving him a solid surface to hold on to, then Eben would have crashed onto the vine furniture that Ash had spent the whole night making.

It was getting worse by the second.

Eben started to lose the ability to differentiate between his surroundings due to his messed up vision.

He didn’t know where up and down or left and right.

Everything seems the same.

Once again, the vine cage came in clutch as Eben used the cage as a guide to lower himself and sat on the ground.

He let his sight go wild and protected himself from going crazy by hugging the vine cage tightly.

He tried closing his eyes, but the petals followed him even with his eyelids closed.

The hallucinations became worse as every sound that he could hear coming from his ears started to change.

What was usually heard as the sound of creaking words, chirping birds, or even the distant murmurs of people, changed.

He could hear people sneaking up on him on the creaky wooden floor, trying to get him.

The sound of mutant predator birds sang in the sky, each of their calls sounding like a conversation among them about how they would torture him first before eating him.

Distant voices of a crowd of people going out on a manhunt to erase him from the surface of Earth.

He wanted to open his eyes and try to run away, but Eben was a mental type awakened himself.

He knew that if he opened up his eyes and let his senses perceive more, then the hallucinations would also invade his sight.

So, despite the fear gripping his heart, Eben tried to ignore the voices, locking his own fears by holding tight to his own limbs, making sure they didn’t burst out of control.

Seeing how it affected Eben, someone who knew mind affecting abilities a lot, he patted himself on the back for not giving the phantom bloom ability to Jack.

If he did, the guy might have really gone on a rampage if Ash hadn’t completely incapacitated him inside a tight titanroot cage.

A full minute passed, and Eben finally recovered.

He felt the hallucinations slowly assimilating into his own body.

There were still faint petals scattered in his vision, and the sounds still made his heart jump a little.

But now, Eben didn’t only know they were illusions, but he was unaffected by them. Their effects didn’t grip him by the neck anymore.

Over time, the petals would be no more as he fully assimilated with the disease.

Ash then told Eben about the new ability that he had just unlocked.

And after making sure Eben could summon the thorns and shoot them, Ash sent him away with a message,

"I know you are dying to try out your new ability, but unless it’s against a target you are planning to kill, don’t use it."

"Yes, boss!"

Eben seemed to want to stay at Ash’s side and explore his new ability more, but Ash reminded him of his responsibilities, and Eben reluctantly opened the vine curtain and left.

But he didn’t leave without a shocking fact, though.

"Um... Boss... You do realize that your clinic doesn’t have a sign yet, right? No one knows this place is a clinic..."